"How is that?"
"Then he would have known for sure whether it was Olga Cedarstrom or not. Just his seeing that her hair was strained back from her face doesn't prove anything."
"I should say it did not," laughed her father. "That manner of wearing the hair seems to be a common failing with these Swedish women. Besides, didn't I tell you that Johnson says that girl is not named 'Cedarstrom?'"
"We-ell, it is awfully funny, Daddy. It doesn't seem as though a girl could disappear so completely—wiped right off the map—"
"Vigorously expressed, I admit," her father interrupted. "But we must not begin to doubt everybody's word about it. I guess Johnson is honest."
"And those other people who knew her in Pickletown?"
"They simply don't know what has become of her. Or of Willie Sangreen, either," Daddy admitted. "That does seem strange. Of course the two have gone off somewhere to be married and have not told their friends."
"It proves that Olga did take dear mother's miniature —and—and those letters," said Janice excitedly. "Or she would not hide herself."
"Yes. I thought we had already agreed on that," her father said.
It was evident that he did not wish uselessly to discuss the matter of the lost keepsakes. Janice, young as she was, realized that her father was growing more grave and more serious every day. She did not believe that this change was altogether due to business anxieties, or even to their household vexations.