Anne looked perplexed.  “There are a lot of cousins.  Yes, Miss Drayton, they’re real.  I don’t know what kin any of them are.  I call them ‘cousin’ because mother did.  They lived near home—­five or six or ten miles away.  And they’d spend a day or week with us.  And we’d go to see them.”

“Oh!  Virginia cousins!” Mrs. Patterson laughed.  “Some time you and I’ll go to see them and take Honey-Sweet, won’t we?—­Sarah, Sarah!  Let’s not make any more investigations.  Wait, like our old friend, Mr. Micawber, for ‘something to turn up.’”

The mails were watched with interest for the promised letter from the New York police, but day after day passed without bringing it.  The American party lingered at the Liverpool hotel.  Mrs. Patterson pleaded each day that she needed to rest a little longer before making the journey to Nantes.  The doctor, called in to prescribe for her, looked grave and suggested that she consult a certain famous physician in Paris.

Miss Drayton was so disturbed about her sister’s illness that she paid little attention to Pat and Anne.  The children, left to their own devices, wandered about the streets in a way that would have been thought shocking had any one thought about the matter.

Once when Anne was walking with Pat and again when she was driving with Mrs. Patterson and Miss Drayton, she caught a glimpse of the steerage passenger who had spoken to her on the dock, and felt that he was watching her.  And then he spoke to her.  It was one morning when she had gone out alone to buy some picture postcards.  She stopped to look in a shop window, and when she turned, there at her elbow stood the man in blue overalls.

“Wait a minute,” he said, in a strained, muffled voice, as she started to walk on.  “Do you want news of your uncle?”

“Of course I do,” she answered in surprise.

“I can give you news.  Walk this afternoon to the bridge beyond the shop where you buy lollipops.  Tell no one what I say.  No one.  If you do, some great harm will come to your uncle.  Will you come?—­alone?”

“If I can.”

“If you do not, you may never hear of your uncle again.  Never.”

“Who are you?  Do you know Uncle Carey?  Tell me—­”

“Not now.  Not here,” he said hurriedly, glancing at the people coming and going on the street.  “This afternoon.  Will you come?”

“Yes.”

“Tell no one.  Promise.”

“I promise.”

He hurried away, and Anne stood quite still, with a strange, bewildering fear at her heart.  Then she turned—­picture postcards had lost all their charm—­and went back to the hotel.

CHAPTER VII

That afternoon Pat went sight-seeing with a new-made friend, Darrell Connor, and his father.  While Anne was hesitating to ask permission to go out, fearing to be refused or questioned, the matter was settled in the simplest possible way.  Miss Drayton coaxed her sister to lie down on the couch in the pleasant sitting-room.