“You may ’phone for one, boy. No. Stay. I’ll not baby myself thus far. The air is warm as summer, almost, and the streets cleared. I’ll take a car; but—Shut that door, Peter. I don’t need you further. If anything happens to Miss Josephine, or any news comes concerning her, send me word at once. Shut that door, can’t you?” he finished testily.
“Certainly, suh;” yet good Peter left it a crack ajar, the better to watch his master, whose actions somehow suggested a different order of things from usual. He saw Mr. Smith descend his own and ascend Mrs. Merriman’s stoop, and threw up his hands in dismay, exclaiming:
“For goodness! I do hope Massa Joe ain’t done gone rake up all that old line-fence trouble, just after her bein’ so good to our little missy. What if ’tis five inches on our ground, and she claimin’ it’s just so far ’tother way, and the lawyers argifying the money outen both their pockets, this ain’t no time for to go hatchin’ fresh miseries. And I never, not once, all these dozen years seen Massa Joe go a callin’ and a visitin’ nobody, not for just pure visit. Whenever he has, ’twas ’cause there was some sort of business tacked on to the end of it somehow. Huh! I never done looked for this, I didn’t.”
Neither had the lady expected the call which was made upon her. But she greeted her guest with a friendly courtesy that made him all the more remorseful for the legal difficulties he had placed in her way in the past, and quite ready to offer his apologies for the same at a fitting opportunity. At present his visit was to express his gratitude for her services to Josephine, and to ask her advice.
“My advice, Mr. Smith? I am the last person in the world to advise so capable a person as yourself. My opinion you’re most welcome to, if you explain what I should express it about,” she returned.
“The little girl, Josephine;” and he told all he knew and had thought concerning her; finishing with the words, “I have so little information to go upon.”
She promptly inquired:
“Beg pardon, but have you gone upon what little you do possess?”
“Madam?” he asked.
“I mean, have you really set about finding this mislaid uncle as if your heart was in it?” she explained.