“Not by any means. I am speaking of the young man who attends to so much of your gardening, and who, as far as I can make out, has more confidence reposed in him, than any one else who comes to Glen Arden. I mean David.”
“David? Dave Carney? Why, Aunt Sophia, what is the trouble about him? We have always found him so satisfactory.”
“Exactly so, and therefore you have never taken the trouble to find out anything else about him. Where did you get him in the first place?”
“Peter met him in Fordham, and brought him home.”
“And do you mean to tell me that is all you know about him? Did you look up his references?”
“No-o, I don’t think so—at least, I’m not sure. Honor attends to all such things. But why, Aunt Sophia? What makes you ask?”
“I have reason to suspect him,” said Mrs. Wentworth Ward. “When I was in Boston yesterday I saw him, or some one who closely resembled him, going into a pawnbroker’s shop, and since then I have questioned Ellen Higgins.”
Ellen Higgins was Mrs. Ward’s maid whom she had brought with her to Glen Arden.
“And what does she say?” asked Victoria. She did not fancy Ellen herself, and since her advent there had been endless trouble in the kitchen.
“She does not like him, and she thinks you trust him entirely too much.”