“And Mrs. Painter said, perfectly serious: ‘Why, bon-vivant, you know. That’s the French for good liver.’”
“Why, Tavia! how ridiculous!” exclaimed Ned Ebony. “It couldn’t be——”
“It’s true, just the same. At any rate, Sam Smike told it to me himself.”
However, even French did not floor Tavia that week. On Saturday Mrs. Pangborn made no objection to the two friends going to the city by train—presumably to do a little shopping.
And they did shop. They had three full hours in town, and they could afford the time. Then they went to the Courier office, and Dorothy sent in her father’s card and her own to one of the editors, and he kindly came out and allowed them to visit “the morgue,” as he called the biographical room, where a young man in spectacles and with a streak of dust on the side of his nose, lifted down heavy, bound volumes of the Courier and showed them how to find the articles for which they were in search.
The Rector Street School fire had been a local disaster of some moment. The first hastily written account, on the day of the fire, did not contain that which interested Dorothy and Tavia. But in the second day’s edition they found what they had never expected to learn—about both Celia Moran’s brother and Miss Olaine.
CHAPTER XV
WHY DID HE DISAPPEAR?
“Misses Dale and Travers, late for supper,” said the sharp voice of Miss Olaine. “Your excuses, please?”
This was the chums’ welcome as they entered the big entrance hall of Glenwood School after dark.