“Yes. You see, in the state where Hedgeville is, Farmer Weeks is her legal guardian, and he could make her work for him until she was twenty-one. He’s an old miser, and as mean as he can be. But once she is out of that state, he can’t touch her, and Mr. Jamieson has had Miss Eleanor appointed her guardian, and mine too, for that state. The state where Miss Eleanor and all of us live, I mean.”
“Well, Mr. Holmes is trying to get hold of you, too, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is. You ought to know, Dolly, after the way he tried to get us both to go off with him in his automobile that day, and the way he set those gypsies on to kidnapping us. And that’s the strangest thing of all.”
“Perhaps he wants to know something about Zara, and thinks you can tell him, or perhaps he’s afraid you’ll tell someone else something he doesn’t want them to know.”
“Yes, it may be that. But that lawyer of his, Isaac Brack, who is so mean and crooked that no one in the city will have anything to do with him except the criminals, Mr. Jamieson says, told me once that unless I went with him I’d never find out the truth about my father and mother and what became of them.”
“Oh, Bessie, how exciting! You never told me that before. Have you told Mr. Jamieson?”
“Yes, and he just looked at me queerly, and said nothing more about it.”
“Bessie, do you know what I think?”
“No. I’m not a mind reader, Dolly!”
“Well, I believe Mr. Jamieson knows more than he has told you yet, or that he guesses something, anyway. And he won’t tell you what it is because he’s afraid he may be wrong, and doesn’t want to raise your hopes unless he’s sure that you won’t be disappointed.”