“Chief Kelly, back home, would take her this very minute if she applied,” Irene declared.
Pauline nodded, easily convinced. This practical, black-haired, blue-eyed girl had helped Judy solve two mysteries and knew that she had talent. But Pauline didn’t want to meet crooks. She didn’t want to be bothered with sick or feeble-minded people and often felt thankful that her father, a brain specialist, had his offices elsewhere. Pauline wanted to meet cultured people who were also interesting.
“People, like that man we met on the bus,” she said, “who read and can discuss books intelligently. I’d hate to think of his being mixed up in anything crooked.”
“You can’t make me believe that he was,” Irene put in with a vigor quite rare for her. “Couldn’t you just see in his eyes that he was real?”
“I didn’t look in his eyes,” Judy returned with a laugh, “but you can be sure I’ll never be satisfied until we find out what that mysterious telegram meant.”
In the days that followed Judy learned that the mere mention of the stranger’s name, Dale Meredith, would cause either girl to cease worrying about a home or about a career, as the case might be.
“It’s almost magical,” she said to herself and had to admit that the spell was also upon her. Perhaps a dozen times a day she would puzzle over the torn papers in her pocketbook. But then, it was Judy’s nature to puzzle over things. It was for that reason that she usually chose detective stories whenever she sat down with a book. That hammock up there on the roof garden was an invitation to read, and soon Judy and Irene had finished all the suitable stories in Dr. Faulkner’s library. They had seen a few shows, gazed at a great many tall buildings, and found New York, generally, less thrilling from the street than it had been from the roof garden.
Pauline sensed this and worried about entertaining her guests. “How would you like to go and see Grant’s Tomb today?” she suggested.
“For Heaven’s sake, think of something a little more exciting than that,” Judy exclaimed thoughtlessly. “I’d rather find a library somewhere and then lie and read something in the hammock.”
“So would I,” agreed Irene, relieved that Judy hadn’t wanted to see the tomb.