Doodles held his breath in terror. Must his treasure be wrested from him before he had even looked upon it?
“I never spoke to the woman in my life,” was the easy answer, “and I did not go into her room until after she died. If there was any fiddle there, I didn’t see it.”
“Did you look about much?” he questioned.
“Oh, yes! We wanted to learn her name, and thought, there might be letters.”
“And you found nothing?” eagerly.
“Only a few little articles of no value. The money for her burial expenses here was in a purse under her pillow.”
“So they told me—and how you made up enough to send her home. It was extremely kind of you. But I’m sorry about that fiddle,” he mused. “I had set my heart on having it—for Kit’s sake. Of course, you’ve heard nothing of her giving it to anybody?” he suddenly probed.
Doodles went white. What would his mother—? But she was already speaking—in that soft, even voice of hers.
“If she was so anxious for you to have it,” she smiled, “she would not have been likely to give it to anybody else, would she?” She met his eyes fearlessly.
“Well, no,—er—she wouldn’t,” he admitted, with a queer laugh. “But in her dying condition she might have been forced into almost anything, you see.”