AN ARTFUL CONFESSION

This Monday morning Bub appeared at the Lodge and had the car ready before Mr. Conant had finished his breakfast.  Mary Louise decided to drive to Millbank with them, just for the pleasure of the trip, and although the boy evidently regarded her presence with distinct disapproval he made no verbal objection.

As Irene wheeled herself out upon the porch to see them start, Mary Louise called to her: 

“Here’s your chair cushion, Irene, lying on the steps and quite wet with dew.  I never supposed you could be so careless.  And you’d better sew up that rip before it gets bigger,” she added, handing the cushion to her friend.

“I will,” Irene quietly returned.

Bub proved himself a good driver before they had gone a mile and it pleased Mr. Conant to observe that the boy made the trip down the treacherous mountain road with admirable caution.  Once on the level, however, he “stepped on it,” as he expressed it, and dashed past the Huddle and over the plain as if training for the Grand Prix.

It amused Mary Louise to watch their quaint little driver, barefooted and in blue-jeans and hickory shirt, with the heavy Scotch golf cap pulled over his eyes, taking his task of handling the car as seriously as might any city chauffeur and executing it fully as well.

During the trip the girl conversed with Mr. Conant.

“Do you remember our referring to an old letter, the other day?” she asked.

“Yes,” said he.

“Irene found it in one of those secondhand books you bought in New York, and she said it spoke of both my mother and my grandfather.”

“The deuce it did!” he exclaimed, evidently startled by the information.

“It must have been quite an old letter,” continued Mary Louise, musingly.

“What did it say?” he demanded, rather eagerly for the unemotional lawyer.

“I don’t know.  Irene wouldn’t let me read it.”

“Wouldn’t, eh?  That’s odd.  Why didn’t you tell me of this before I left the Lodge?”

“I didn’t think to tell you, until now.  And, Uncle Peter, what, do you think of Miss Lord?”

“A very charming lady.  What did Irene do with the letter?”

“I think she left it in the book; and—­the book was stolen the very next day.”

“Great Caesar!  Who knew about that letter?”

“Miss Lord was present when Irene found the letter, and she heard Irene exclaim that it was all about my mother, as well as about my grandfather.”

“Miss Lord?”

“Yes.”

“And the book was taken by someone?”

“The next day.  We missed it after—­after Miss Lord had visited the den alone.”

“Huh!”

He rode for awhile in silence.

“Really,” he muttered, as if to himself, “I ought to go back.  I ought not to take for granted the fact that this old letter is unimportant.  However, Irene has read it, and if it happened to be of value I’m sure the girl would have told me about it.”