"Blossom, Blossom! Did I hear aright, young lady?" asked Judge Tuttle. "Is your name Blossom?"
"Yes, sir," said Josie, respectfully, but wishing in her heart the old gentleman would not insist on that absurd name, "Sally Blossom!"
"Ah, and from what part of the country do you come?"
"Washington," answered Josie, thankful that at one time she had lived there—was living there in fact when her father, Detective O'Gorman, died. "I have been in Dorfield lately, though, on business."
"My grandmother's maiden name was Blossom," continued the judge, "and strange to say, it was also Sally, or Sarah by the time she got to be my grandmother. But she was a Virginian, a Virginian of tide-water fame. What Blossom are you?"
"Just Blossom, sir; a blooming Blossom! My father was English," she said in desperation. "At least I think he was. He died before he was born—I mean I was born."
"Ah, very sad!" ventured the Judge and Miss Hite-Smith thought so too. Josie, for her part, thought he was much better dead—that fictitious Blossom. This questioning was more than she had bargained for. People usually let her do the questioning. She rather fancied it was the bobbed wig and the artificial complexion that made persons like the judge notice her.
"That is a beautiful old house on the corner near here," she ventured.
"You mean the Haskins?" spoke up Miss Denton. "Yes, it is very handsome, no doubt, but too ornate and pie-crusty for my—taste." Then a discussion ensued concerning architecture, old and new.
"I mean the house going East from this place," put in Josie, not at all interested in the Haskins house. "The old home with the ivy and the box-bushes in the yard."