It was some time later that she told him just how well she had searched for the missing box. She narrated, too, all the particulars of the early morning cat episode and the trouble brought about by the mischief-loving Arlo Junior, which she had been unable to tell him earlier in the day.
"It would seem, then," Mr. Day observed, not unamused by the account of the neighbors' boy's practical joke, "that if Olga took the box it was on the spur of the moment. She certainly had not planned to leave us, but lost her temper and went because she was in a rage."
"Yes, sir. I suppose so," admitted Janice. "And she was mad at me, too. I could see she thought I had shut the cats in the back kitchen."
"Yet Olga's going," said Mr. Broxton Day, still thoughtfully, "was skillfully planned—just as though she had everything arranged for it before the row this morning. Don't just understand that."
"Oh, Daddy! You don't suppose Olga was one of those awful crooks we read of in the papers?"
Mr. Broxton threw back his head and laughed in his very heartiest fashion.
"Whatever else she was," he said, finally, "I don't think she was a lady buccaneer. Olga Cedarstrom appeared to be almost as stupid a person as I ever saw. But she was bad tempered—no doubt of that."
"Yes, Daddy, her disposition was not very sweet,"
admitted Janice, with a sigh.
"But it looks queer," her father pursued. "Sending for an out-of-town taxi, and all I say, daughter which way did it drive?"