“Ned, how dare you say such a thing!” Dorothy turned upon him with flashing eyes. “Poor Joe needs his family just now—and that’s all he needs.”
She was gone before her cousin could speak, and Ned was left to whistle his surprise and admiration.
“Poor, loyal kid,” he muttered, as he went on down the stairs. “Has a lot on her mind, too. Guess Nat and I had better get busy if we don’t want to lose our reputations as rivals of the great detectives.”
Meantime Dorothy had rapped upon her father’s door and, receiving no answer, pushed it gently open.
So still and quiet was the Major’s face upon the pillow that she thought for a moment he was asleep. But as she turned to creep silently away he opened his eyes and called to her.
“I have been waiting to see you, daughter,” he said, and again Dorothy detected that unusual wistfulness in his tone. “Where have you been?”
Dorothy evaded the question, feeling miserable as she did so. Never before had she refused to answer any query put to her by the Major and now it was almost impossible not to give him a straightforward reply. Yet how could she tell him, in his weakened condition, that Joe was suspected of having set fire to Haskell’s store?
Instead, she gave some explanation of her absence that seemed to satisfy him well enough. When she came and knelt beside his bed he spoke in his old cheerful vein of his indisposition, insisting that it was sheer laziness on his part and that he would surely be downstairs for luncheon.
But Dorothy, looking at his worn and weary face, was not so optimistic. Although she succeeded in hiding her anxiety beneath her usual practical and cheerful manner, she was inwardly deciding to call up the family physician as soon as she left her father’s room.
She knew that when the Major kept his bed there was something seriously wrong with him.