If so, why was everyone trying to keep her in the dark?
"I cannot see that this helps to solve the mystery," said Mrs. Conant in a brisk tone as she recovered from her surprise. "Let us put the whole thing out of mind, Mary Louise, or it will keep us all stirred up and in a muddle of doubt. I shall tell Peter you are to live with us, and your old little room at the back of the hall is all ready for you. Irene has the next room, so you will be quite neighborly. Go and put away your things and then we'll whistle for Irene."
Mary Louise went to the well-remembered room and slowly and thoughtfully unpacked her suit case. She was glad to find a home again among congenial people, but she was growing more and more perplexed over the astonishing case of Gran'pa Jim. It worried her to find that an occasional doubt would cross her mind in spite of her intense loyalty to her dearly loved grandparent. She would promptly drive out the doubt, but it would insist on intruding again.
"Something is wrong somewhere," she sighed. "There must be some snarl that even Gran'pa Jim can't untangle; and, if he can't, I'm sure no one else can. I wish I could find him and that he would tell me all about it. I suppose he thinks I'm too young to confide in, but I'm almost sixteen now and surely that's old enough to understand things. There were girls at school twenty years old that I'm sure couldn't reason as well as I can."
After a while she went down stairs and joined Irene in the garden, where the chair-girl was trimming rose bushes with a pair of stout scissors. She greeted Mary Louise with her bright smile, saying:
"I suppose everything is fixed up, now, and we can begin to get acquainted."
"Why, we ARE acquainted," declared Mary Louise. "Until to-day I had never heard of you, yet it seems as if I had known you always."
"Thank you," laughed Irene; "that is a very pretty compliment, I well realize. You have decided to stay, then?"
"Aunt Hannah has decided so, but Mr. Conant may object."
"He won't do that," was the quick reply. "Uncle Peter may be an autocrat in his office, but I've noticed that Aunt Hannah is the ruler of this household."