The Project Gutenberg eBook, Bobs, a Girl Detective, by Grace May North

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Title: Bobs, a Girl Detective

Author: Grace May North

Release Date: February 19, 2013 [eBook #42133]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOBS, A GIRL DETECTIVE***

E-text prepared by Stephen Hutcheson, Rod Crawford, Dave Morgan,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)

During his absence she went back of the counter.

BOBS,
A GIRL DETECTIVE

By CAROL NORTON

THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
AKRON, OHIO NEW YORK

Copyright MCMXXVIII
By THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING CO.
PRINTED IN U.S.A.

BOBS, A GIRL DETECTIVE

CHAPTER I
FOUR GIRLS FACE A PROBLEM

“Now that the crash is over and the last echo has ceased to reverberate through our ancestral halls, the problem before the house is what shall the family of Vandergrifts do next?”

“Gloria, I do wish you wouldn’t stand there grinning like a Cheshire cat. There certainly is nothing amusing about the whirlwind of a catastrophe that we have just been through and are still in, for that matter.” Gwendolyn tapped her bronze-slippered toe impatiently as she sat in a luxuriously upholstered chair in what, until this past week, had been the library in the Long Island home of the proud family of Vandergrifts.

Gloria, the oldest of the four girls, ceased to smile but the pleasant expression, which was habitual to the blue eyes, did not entirely vanish as she inquired, “What would you have me do, Gwen? Fret and fume as you are doing? That is no way to readjust your life to new and changed conditions. Face the facts squarely, say I, and then try to find some way to surmount your difficulties. Now first of all, we ought——”

The dark, handsome Gwendolyn, whose natural selfishness was plainly portrayed in a drooping mouth and petulant expression, put her fingers in her ears, saying: “If you are going to preach, I can assure you that I am not going to listen; so you might as well save your breath until——”

“Hush. Here comes Lena May in from the garden. Don’t let her hear us scrapping. It effects her sensitive soul as discord effects a true musician.”

Lena May entered through the porch door, her arms filled with blossoming branches.

“Look, sisters, aren’t apple blossoms even sweeter than usual this year?” the slip of a girl began, then paused and glanced from one face to the other. “Gwen, what is wrong?” she asked anxiously.

But it was Gloria who replied, “Nothing at all, Pet. That is, nothing ‘wronger’ than usual, if you will permit my lapse of grammar.”

But the dark-eyed sister threw down the book which she had been trying to read, as she exclaimed, “You both know perfectly well than nothing could be in more of a muddle than our lives are at the present moment and your ‘look for the silver lining,’ philosophy, Gloria Vandergrift, doesn’t help me in the least.”

The fawn-like eyes of the frail, youngest sister turned inquiringly toward the oldest. “Has anything more happened, I mean, anything new?” she asked.

“Yes, dear, we had a letter from Father’s lawyer and he states than beyond a doubt our place here on Long Island does not belong to us and, for that matter, it never did really. Grandfather bought it in good faith, I am sure, but he did not receive a clear title.”

“Then why doesn’t our lawyer clear it up? That’s what I’d like to know,” Gwen said, throwing herself petulantly into another position. “Why did Father employ him, if he cannot attend to our legal matters?”

“But, Gwen, dear, can’t you understand?” Gloria began to explain with infinite patience. “When Father died, leaving four orphaned daughters, we knew that the fortune he had inherited had been lost through unwise investments, but we did think that the income from this vast acreage and the tenants would be sufficient to permit us to live in about the same comfortable way that we always have, but now we find that even this place is not ours and that we are—well, up against it, as Bobs would say.”

“Where is Bobs?” This from Lena May, who was arranging the sprays of apple blossoms in a large pale-green bowl on a low wicker stand.

“Look out of yonder window and you will see the object of your inquiry,” Gloria laughed as she pointed toward the park-like grounds where a hoidenish young girl of 17 could be seen riding astride a slender high-spirited black horse with a white star in his forehead.

“I do wish Roberta wouldn’t wear that outlandish costume,” Gwendolyn began, “and what’s more I can’t see why she wants to be galloping around the country in that fashion when a calamity like this is staring us in the face.”

The horse had disappeared beyond the shrubbery. The sisters supposed that the young rider would go down to the stables and so they were somewhat startled, a second later, by seeing Bobs vault over the sill of an open window and land in their midst.

Gwendolyn, of course, rebuked her. “Roberta Vandergrift, aren’t you ever going to become ladylike?” she admonished.

The newcomer was about to retort that she hoped not if Gwen was a sample, but Gloria intervened. “Don’t be ladylike, Bobs,” she said. “Now, more than ever, we need a man in the family. But come, let’s talk peaceably together and decide what we are to do.”

“All right,” Roberta tossed her hat to one side and sat tailor-wise on the floor, adding: “Fire ahead, I’m present.”

“Such language,” was what Gwendolyn refrained from saying, but Bobs chuckled in wicked glee. She thought it jolly fun to shock “Miss Prunes and Prisms,” as she called the sister but one year her senior.

“Gloria, whatever you suggest, I know will be best,” little Lena May said, as she slipped a trusting hand into that of the oldest sister. “Now, tell us, what is your plan?”

The oldest girl was thoughtful for a moment, then said: “Honestly, I don’t know that I have made one very far ahead, but of course we must leave here. That is the inevitable, and, equally of course, we must find some way of earning our daily bread.”

“Bread, indeed,” sniffed the disdainful Gwendolyn. “You know that I never eat such a plebian thing as bread.”

“Well, you may work to earn cake if you prefer,” Bobs told her, then leaning forward