“What is her name and what has she done?”
“Bertha. Or, perhaps it isn’t Bertha. But we think so.”
“Somehow, it seems to me, you have begun wrong. Who is this young person who may be Bertha but who probably is not?”
Jessie told him about the “kidnaped” girl then. But it spilled out of her mouth so rapidly and so disconnectedly that it is little wonder that Mr. Norwood, lawyer though he was, got a rather hazy idea of the incident connected with the strange girl’s being captured on Dogtown Lane.
In fact, he got that girl and little, freckled Henrietta Haney rather mixed up in his mind. He found himself advising Jessie to have the child come to the house so that Momsy could see her. Momsy always knew what to do to help such unfortunates.
“And you think there can be nothing done for that other girl?” Jessie asked, rather mournfully.
“Oh! You mean the girl you saw put in the automobile and taken away? Well, we don’t know her or the woman who took her, do we?”
“No-o. Though Amy says she thinks she has 88 seen somebody who looks like the woman driving the car before.”
“Humph! You have no case,” declared Mr. Norwood, in his most judicial manner. “I fear it would be thrown out of court.”
“Oh, dear!”