“O-O-h! Are you really?” and Miss Lily Burnett sailed down the stairs rapidly. “My brother has told us a lot about you and we have been anxious to meet you. Uncle Abe, you must tell Mr. Teddy immediately that Miss O’Gorman is here. Please come in, and when you and Brother Teddy get through your business talk we will be so glad if you will have tea with us. Now don’t say ‘no.’”
There was a sweet frankness about Miss Lily Burnett’s voice and manner that appealed to Josie but she felt that for the time being she must forego the pleasure of tea with the family of her employer.
“I am very sorry, but I am too busy to stop with you to-day,” she said.
“Well then, promise another day!” and Josie promised and was at last shown into the library where the master of the house and the junior partner of the firm sat in some dejection, attempting to read but evidently restless and preoccupied.
“Miss O’Gorman!” Mr. Theodore exclaimed, jumping up. “I have been wondering how I could get hold of you. Of course I had your address but no telephone number. I have wanted very much to have a talk with you ever since Major Simpson told me he was going to hunt you up. He found you, did he not? I don’t know how the old fellow happened to catch on to your being what you are. He is more astute than we thought. Perhaps calling himself a detective for so many years has finally made him one.”
Josie began to laugh.
“He has found out where I live and as far as I can make out he has sworn my landlady to secrecy in regard to his having tracked me. He has a mystery up his sleeve and for the life of me I cannot make it out. But I am not here to discuss Major Simpson and you have not told me why you wanted to talk to me. First let me ask you if a shoplifter has been at work again and carried off several yards of exquisite lace and a gold mesh bag?”
“How did you find that out? Major Simpson must have had a leakage somewhere. Ah, perhaps you have seen one of the sales-ladies?”
“Worse and more of it! I have found the goods in my own pocket.” Josie produced the stolen articles and laid them on the library table. “It seems almost too good to be true that my pocket was the one chosen, and it also convinces me that my father was right when he declared truth to be stranger than fiction. A real detective tale would never sell with such a thing as this happening in it.”
She then recounted in detail the story of how Miss Fauntleroy bought the paper and then twisting it up angrily returned it to the old newsie, and how the woman seemed genuinely distressed that she, Josie, should take the rumpled paper.