“I understand it,” said mistress softly, and as she spoke she stroked George’s fair head. “It’s some poor creature who cannot provide for her child. She looks at our child with envious eyes. She thinks if she gives up her boy, we may do for him what Stanna has done for Cyria.”
“Do you think that is the explanation?” said master. “But in Stanna’s case everything was open and above board. I don’t like this mystery, and I don’t care to be dictated to with regard to the size of my family.”
“Let’s find out the mother,” said mistress. “It will probably be an easy matter.”
It wasn’t an easy matter. Master put several detectives on the case, but the affair had been arranged by some unknown person with infinite skill, and they could not find out one thing about it. No one thought of appealing to me, though I had guessed immediately where the boy came from.
Master of course thought of King Harry; but he was useless, for the child’s tracks led right to the station, and the station meant New York city, and the hound would be of no use there. He had found the lost child in the country that he had been searching for when Sir Edward was missing, but a city with its multitude of tracks bewilders any bloodhound.
The evening the child arrived, there had been about him a strong smell of a place I did not know, but also a faint suggestion of a place I did know, especially about his face, his hands, and the piece of paper he carried, and that place was the Blue-Bird Laundry.
We dogs have every person, every locality, listed in our world of smell. I had been to the laundry several times with my master, and the mingled odour of soap-suds, cooking, and the personal scent of the women there, could not be mistaken by me.
These detectives that master employed had no highly developed sense of smell. They were following trails suggested by their eyes and ears.
Master was a long time figuring out my interest in the child, but finally it dawned upon him.
I was always sniffing about the little stranger, for I wanted to help my dear mistress. She was such a good mother, and I hated to see her troubled. Her loving heart, so warm toward all mothers, since she had had a child of her own, had prompted her to take young Montmorency right into her own nursery, but she did not enjoy doing so.