“His answer, as I remember it, was ‘sort of,’” Horace reported.
“If that house weren’t all boarded up I’d think he stayed there. He says he used to live there, and Miss Hanley says she knew the man who lived there years ago. Could it be Danny’s father?” Judy wondered. “Could that be why she’s so fond of Danny?”
“Sounds reasonable,” Horace commented.
But, to Judy, it was more than reasonable, it was romantic. She looked forward to discussing it with Peter. He had a way with small boys. Perhaps Danny would confide in him. Judy wondered about Danny’s mother. Why had his father deserted Meta Hanley to marry her? And where was he now?
Judy was still puzzling over these questions when she and Horace arrived in Farringdon. She drove straight to the Bolton home on Grove Street. They had gone back to the beaver dam, she told her mother, and Horace had accidentally fallen in the pond. Nothing was said about the leg of the lady table.
After a hot lunch, with Mrs. Bolton hovering over both of them, Judy left for her home in Dry Brook Hollow, and Horace returned to the newspaper office.
“There’s a story there,” he insisted as they parted. “That boy wasn’t telling us everything he knew.”
CHAPTER XI
A Born Crusader
Judy agreed with her brother. Instead of solving everything, their trip had only deepened the mystery. It was hard for her to concentrate on other things such as the library exhibit. At home, as she sorted the school cards and mementos for September, she pondered over everything that had happened that day and the day before.