I wasn’t fit, that was the fact, for my self-imposed task of private detective.
A good part of that night I lay awake in my berth, bitterly reproaching myself for having come on this wild-goose chase without the aid of a man—an experienced officer. Next morning, I rose and breakfasted in the car. The Cheritons breakfasted with me, and, sad to say, seemed more charming than ever. That good fellow Jack was so attentive and kind, I almost felt ashamed to have to refuse his hospitality; and as for Elsie, she couldn’t have treated me more nicely or cordially if she’d been my own sister. It wasn’t what they said that touched my heart: it was what they didn’t say or do—their sweet, generous reticence.
After breakfast, I steeled myself for the task, and broke it to them gently that, thinking it over in the night, I’d come to the conclusion I couldn’t consistently accept their proffered welcome.
“I don’t know how to say NO to you,” I cried, “after you’ve been so wonderfully kind and nice; but reasons which I can’t fully explain just now make me feel it would be wrong of me to think of stopping with you. It would hamper my independence of action to be in anybody else’s house. I must shift for myself, and try if I can’t find board and lodging somewhere.”
“Find it with us then!” Elsie put in eagerly. “If that’s all that’s the matter, I’m sure we’re not proud—are we, Jack?—not a bit. Sooner than you should go elsewhere and be uncomfortable in your rooms, I’d take you in myself, and board you and look after you. You could pay what you like; and then you’d retain your independence, you see, as much as ever you wanted.”
But her brother interrupted her with a somewhat graver air:
“It goes deeper than that, I’m afraid, Elsie,” he said, turning his eye full upon her. “If Miss Callingham feels she couldn’t be happy in stopping with us, she’d better try elsewhere. Though where on earth we can put her, I haven’t just now the very slightest idea. But we’ll turn it over in our own minds before we reach Adolphus Town.”
There was a sweet reasonableness about Jack that attracted me greatly. I could see he entered vaguely into the real nature of my feelings. But he wouldn’t cross-question me: he was too much of a gentleman.
“Miss Callingham knows her own motives best,” he said more than once, when Elsie tried to return to the charge. “If she feels she can’t come to us, we must be content to do the best we can for her with our neighbours. Perhaps Mrs. Walters would take her in: she’s our clergyman’s wife, Miss Callingham, and you mightn’t feel the same awkwardness with her as with my sister.”
“Does she know—Dr. Ivor?” I faltered out, unable to conceal my real reasons entirely.