“Hadn’t you better go into the house?” he asked anxiously. “You look ill. Do you feel faint?”
“Oh, I’m all right,” she said almost impatiently. “I’m just worried. Maybe there isn’t anything the matter, but—it looks very—queer. This must be the note the boy brought.”
She began to read the note, which was written in a clear feminine hand on fine note paper:
“Dear Carey, I came out here to see a Sunday-school scholar who is sick, and I am in great trouble. Come to me quick! I’m out at Lamb’s Tavern.
“Grace.”
“I don’t understand it,” faltered Cornelia, looking up at Maxwell helplessly. “She—this! It is signed ‘Grace,’ and looks as if Grace Kendall wrote it. I am sure Carey thought so when he went. But—Grace Kendall was at home only a few minutes ago. She called me up to ask me to bring some music she had left here when I come to church. How could she have got out there so soon?”
Maxwell took the note, and read it with a glance, then turned the paper over, and felt its thickness.
“Curious they should have such stationery at Lamb’s Tavern. Who brought it?”
“A boy. I’m not sure. He looked as if I had seen him before. He might have, been—” she hesitated, and the color stole into her cheeks. The trouble was deep in her eyes. “He might have been a boy who came here on an errand once; I wasn’t certain. I only saw him from the window.”
“You knew him?”