"You don't mean—"
"I mean they've left the country," said the woman.
"Left this part of the country?"
"They have gone back to Sweden," said Janice's informant, nodding over her sewing. "Yes. They had a stroke of luck. Mrs. Johnson told me herself in her broken talk. Near's I could find out her grandfather had died and left her a bit of property, and she and her family were going back to the place they came from ten years ago, to attend to it. Lucky folks, some of them foreigners. I don't see for the life of me why they ever leave their homes and come over here, when they've got money and land comin' to them at home."
The woman talked on, even faster than Miss Peckham was wont to talk. But her volubility gave Janice a chance to recover her self-possession. She saw quite clearly that her errand had come to naught. Even if the Lathams positively knew the missing Olga had been named Cedarstrom before her marriage they probably did not know where Olga now was.
The people who were the more likely to know, these Johnsons, had gone back to their native land. Janice wondered, despairingly, if Olga had gone back to Sweden too.
But the girl was able to hide her trouble from this new acquaintance. The woman was glad to have her stay— and talk. Rather, the hostess did the talking. It was evident that she got little chance for conversation, living as she did on this rather lonely road.
Janice planned what she would do, however, while she listened. Rather than go back and perhaps have another quarrel with Stella, she decided she would go home and tell her father what she had found out. He might write to Mrs. Latham for information—if the farmer's wife had any—regarding Olga.
At least, it was one sure thing, that such information as Janice had obtained was much too late. An ocean separated her now from the Johnsons, Olga's friends.