“I never meant anything more sincerely in my whole life,” he declared, and Judy wouldn’t have doubted him if she hadn’t caught Peter looking as if he didn’t know what to believe. Was George Anderson a generous father offering his own home to the homeless children, or was this a trick?
CHAPTER XX
Was It All a Mistake?
“Peter,” asked Judy when they were in their own car following the lighter car driven by Danny’s father, “do you think it was all a mistake? I mean about the meeting place?”
“‘Beaver dam’ and ‘Beverly’ don’t sound much alike,” Peter replied. “But it does look as if one of them waited in one place and one in another. It’s this business of his that worries me. Well, here we are.”
Danny’s father was out of his car first. He parked it under a tree and waited for Judy and Peter a little impatiently.
“You see,” he pointed out, indicating the boarded-up windows and the unkept yard, “the house is just as I expected to find it. There’s plenty to do. It’s been closed for six years, but with the kids to help, it shouldn’t take us long to put it in shape.”
“Six years, did you say? That would be about the time of the Roulsville flood, wouldn’t it?” questioned Peter.
“About,” George Anderson replied without a change of expression. “It was right after the flood, as I recollect it. I lost my wife a short time before.”
He went on talking about his wife as they walked toward the house. She used to live in Roulsville and when he said her maiden name was Mary Turner, Judy thought she remembered her.