"No."
"Collecting statistics, perhaps?"
"Not at all; my errand is neither philanthropic nor scientific."
"Private and personal, that is, and not to be farther pursued by impertinent inquiry?"
"Oh, I have no objection to telling you, since you are not a native. I am searching for my great-great-grandmother."
Flint looked at his companion uneasily. She smiled.
"No, I have not lost my senses. Such as they are, I have them all. I do not expect to find this ancestress of mine in the flesh, nor sitting in any one of the splint rockers behind the checkered window-panes of the old South East houses. It is only her portrait for which I am searching as for hid treasure."
"Ah!"
"Yes, her portrait. I feel certain it is hidden away somewhere in South East."