“I have one important piece of news. Remember the letters found in the evergreen cottage at the close of our holiday in Beechwood Forest? I gave them to Mr. Hammond for safe keeping, when I believed they had nothing to do with the fact that I was found deserted in the cabin years before. You know Mr. and Mrs. Hammond are in town and often bring Lucy to see me.
“Well, the other day Mr. Hammond by chance observed an advertisement in a morning paper signed with the name used in one of the old letters. The advertisement asked that some one from Westhaven communicate with the writer. Mr. Hammond wrote and is to see the person next week. Not one chance in a thousand that your humble servant is connected with the mystery! But Mr. Hammond and I decided that it was one way to keep oneself from being dull.”
“I am afraid it does not sound very hopeful, dear,” Dorothy answered reluctantly. “Would you like to hear about Lance?”
At this instant there was a knock on the door and before Kara could reply a nurse suggested that the visit must end.
The girls might return another afternoon, but a half hour’s call was all that was allowed at one time.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CALL
AMONG the excitements of Tory’s visit to New York was a call she was to make upon an artist friend of her father’s.
Pleased with several of the sketches Tory had made during the past summer in camp, Mr. Drew desired an opinion upon her work from some one whose judgment he trusted. He knew himself to be too interested to be a good critic of his daughter’s gift. Now and then he believed himself too severe, that he expected more artistic gift than was possible in one of Tory’s age. Again he feared that his own devotion blinded him to conspicuous faults in her work.
So Tory brought with her a letter from her father to Philip Winslow. She was to call by appointment on a certain afternoon at his studio in the downtown section of the city.