e agent said
that they don't want to talk about it. My, but that man was cranky,
wasn't he!"

"I think he was sick," said Cynthia. "He looked it. Well, I suppose we
will have to give it all up! We've tried just about everything."
Suddenly she stopped and stood perfectly still, staring blankly at
nothing.

"Come on!" urged Joyce. "Whatever is the matter with you, standing here
like that?"

"I was just thinking--seems to me I remember something about the first
day we got into the B. U. H. Didn't you tell me that you knew the house
was left furnished, that somebody had told your father so?"

"Why, _of course_!" cried Joyce, excited at once. "I certainly did, and
what a stupid I am not to have thought of it since!" And she herself
stopped short and stood thinking.

"Well, what is it?" demanded Cynthia, impatiently. "Who's stopping and
staring now?"

"The trouble is," said Joyce, slowly, "that the whole thing's not very
clear in my mind. It was several years ago that I heard Father mention
it. Somebody was visiting us when we first moved here, and asked him at
the table about the old house next door. And Father said, I think, that
he didn't know anything much about it only that it was a queer old
place, and once he had met an elderly lady who happened to mention to
him that she knew the house was left furnished, just as it was, and she
didn't think the owners would ever live in it again. I don't know why I
happened to remember this. It must have made quite an impression on me,
because I was a good deal younger and didn't generally listen much to
what they were saying at table."

"Well," announced Cynthia, still standing where she had stopped, and
speaking with great positiveness, "there's only one thing to do now, and
that is, find out who the old lady is and hunt her up!"

"I suppose I can find out her name from Father--if he remembers it--but
what then? I can't go and scrape up an acquaintance with a perfectly
strange person, and she _may_ live in Timbuctoo!" objected Joyce.

"It's the only thing left, the 'last resort' as they say in stories,"
said Cynthia. "But, of course, you can do as you like. You're
engineering this business!"

"Well, I will," conceded Joyce, not very hopefully, however. "I'll lead
Father round to talking of her this evening, if I can, and see what
comes of it."

Joyce was as good as her word. That evening when she and her father were
seated cozily in the library, she studying, her fat