Tavia glanced at the card. Then she read the inscription aloud.
"Of all the—nerve!" she exclaimed, seemingly at a total loss to grasp any other word. "To ask me to call on a handwriting expert! Does she think I want her services?"
"I was, and am still, just as puzzled as you are, Tavia; but she seemed so serious. Said you were young, and that perhaps she could help you——"
Tavia seemed to catch her breath. The next moment she had recovered herself. "I might call—just for fun. Then, again—I might not," she said indifferently.
"So many queer things contrived to happen," continued Dorothy, noting the slight agitation her chum betrayed. "The clerk at the jewelry counter—Miss Allen, the pleasant girl—told me the woman detective, Miss Dearing, had been discharged."
"Nothing queer about that," exclaimed Tavia. "The wonder is they ever employed such a person in that capacity. Why, I fancy she would arrest a baby to fix her case. Too ambitious, I guess."
"Perhaps," acquiesced Dorothy. "But Miss Allen said she asked for my address. Now, what could she want that for?"
"To apologize, likely. Surely she owes you some sort of apology."
"She was merely mistaken," corrected Dorothy, "and did what she considered her duty."
"The sweetness of forgiving," soliloquized Tavia.