"Well, a vixen. They say so. All the same, she's doing a lot of real good with her money."
"How do you mean?"
"She's established a sort of home for the offspring of vicious and degenerate parents. It's really quite a wonderful combination of clinic and training school where suspected or plainly defective children are brought to be taught and to remain under observation—really a finely conceived charity, I understand. Why not call on her?"
"Very well," said Cleland, reluctantly, not caring very much about encountering "vixens" and "birds" of the female persuasion.
Except for this paternal aunt and the Grismers, there turned out to be no living human being related to the child Stephanie.
Once assured of this, John Cleland undertook the journey to Bayport, running down in his car one morning, and determined that a combination of mild dignity and gallant urbanity should conquer any untoward symptoms which this "bird" might develop.
When he arrived at the entrance to the place, a nurse on duty gave him proper directions how to find Miss Quest, who was out about the grounds somewhere.
He found her at last, in nurse's garb, marching up and down the gravel paths of the "Common Sense Home for Defectives," as the institution was called.
She was pruning privet hedges. She had a grim face, a belligerent eye, and she stood clicking her pruning shears aggressively as he approached, hat in hand.
"Miss Quest, I presume?" he inquired.