“Oh, I’m used to it about my work. I’m all full of little stabs! but those don’t count—comparatively,” she said. She made it quite evident that she had not forgiven him Dave’s injuries, for all his penitence. I thought our hostess was a little relieved when we came away; a serene atmosphere was evidently what suited her.
Alice Yorke took Estelle away with her to stay with a relative in town. She was to visit the editor who “might like to see her drawings,” in the morning and she wanted us to go with her.
As for me, I was going into the region of cheese and preserves and possible sausages. Practical affairs were likely to settle my mind after all this disturbing mystery about Dave.
But I certainly was unable to compose myself now, or to cease wondering what Loveday could have discovered to account for her strange pilgrimage. I was anxious, too, about what had become of her; Loveday did seem so entirely out of her element in the city.
I had no appetite for the dreary boarding-house dinner and after it was over I managed to slip out of the house. Octavia had lain down, thoroughly tired out by the emotions and excitements of the day.
I had remembered suddenly the slip of paper that was constantly fluttering out of Loveday’s Daily Food—the little devotional book that she carried in her pocket. There was written upon it the address of an aunt whom she meant, sometime, to go to see in an old-fashioned street in the West End of the city. I remembered the street and number perfectly, so many times had I picked up the scrap of paper for her in more youthful days, vaguely feeling it to be a curious thing that Loveday should have an aunt. It was still very early in the spring evening and the street was not far away.
As I went down the steps I met Ned Carruthers coming up. He had heard us mention where we were staying and he had taken the liberty to come to see if we could give him Loveday’s address. Now it was one thing to intrude myself upon the privacy that Loveday evidently intended to preserve and another thing to aid and abet a strange young man in doing it. I said that I had only a guess as to her whereabouts and that I did not feel at liberty to divulge.
“But you can’t go alone, in the evening,” he insisted.
I replied, a little stiffly, that Palmyran conventions were not those of the city and I was not afraid.
“It is my business, you know,” he said stoutly, in the boyish way that made one like him. “Anyway you can’t hinder me from finding Alf Reeder and his horse.”