“Oh, dear me, Harvey, who in the world is this?” cried a little, pleasant-voiced old lady, who had witnessed the young girl enter the gate, and saw her stagger and fall. In a moment she had fluttered down the path, and was kneeling by Daisy’s side.
“Come here, Harvey,” she called; “it is a young girl; she has fainted.”
Mr. Harvey Tudor, the celebrated detective, threw away the cigar he had been smoking, and hastened to his wife’s side.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” cried the little lady, in ecstasy. “I wonder who she is, and what she wanted.”
“She is evidently a stranger, and called to consult me professionally,” responded Mr. Tudor; “she must be brought into the house.”
He lifted the slight, delicate figure in his arms, and bore her into the house.
“I am going down to the office now, my dear,” he said; 167 “we have some important cases to look after this morning. I will take a run up in the course of an hour or so. If the young girl should recover and wish to see me very particularly, I suppose you will have to send for me. Don’t get me away up here unless you find out the case is imperative.”
And with a good-humored nod, the shrewd detective, so quiet and domesticated at his own fireside, walked quickly down the path to the gate, whistling softly to himself––thinking with a strange, puzzled expression in his keen blue eyes, of Daisy. Through all of his business transactions that morning the beautiful, childish face was strangely before his mind’s eye.
“Confound it!” he muttered, seizing his hat, “I must hurry home and find out at once who that pretty little creature is––and what she wants.”