Promptly at ten o’clock the next morning, Jannet was waiting in the library for her uncle. She had timidly said at breakfast, “I will be in the library at ten, Uncle Pieter,” and he had replied, “Very well, Jannet.”

She had brought with her the little slip of paper which she had found in the book. If she had opportunity, she was going to sound him about it, or show it to him, provided she could screw her courage to the point. Just why she should be afraid of her Uncle Pieter, Jannet did not know, but he did not invite confidences. She was sure that he had not the least sentiment about him. But she was not ready to accept any gossip about him. She would find out for herself what sort of a man her uncle was.

As she sat there, thinking, in the midst of the books that lined the walls or stood out in their cases, she remembered what Miss Hilliard had once said in warning the girls: “Most of us are talked about from the cradle to the grave. Some of what ‘they’ say is true and a good part of it is not.”

It was a quarter past ten when her uncle hurried into the library and hung his hat on a small rack. He was in riding costume and looked very nice, Jannet thought, a little like Andy. “I’m late, Jannet. Do not follow my example. I was detained, on an errand to the next farm. Now, let me see, what were we going to talk about?”

“I have ever so many things to talk to you about,” soberly said Jannet, “but you had something, you said, about plans and things.”

“Then we’ll talk about ‘plans and things’ first,” said her uncle smiling a little. He sat down by his desk, leaning back comfortably in a large chair there and motioning Jannet to a seat near him. For a moment he drummed on the desk with the fingers of his right hand, looking down thoughtfully.

“You may have wondered why I have not talked to you before,” he said at last, “but it takes some time to gather up the history of fifteen years or so, and I have hoped that you might find out some things gradually and form the rest. I am not much of a talker.

“The particular thing that I want to ask you is whether you like it here enough to make it your home, whether you will consent to give up your school to be tutored, with some travel, and a few advantages that I think I can give you, or whether you would prefer to go back to the other mode of life. It may be too soon to ask you this. If so, we can put it off.” Jannet was surprised, and more at her own feeling.

“No, Uncle Pieter, it is not too soon. I felt as soon as I reached my mother’s room that here was home. But you would not mean to cut me off from the people that have been so good to me, would you?”

“No, but I’d like to get you away from the eternal atmosphere of a school. I feel a responsibility, now that I know you are on earth.”

“Why, do you?” Jannet’s face lit up. Perhaps Uncle Pieter really liked her a little, too. “That is nice, but I had vacations, you know,—only I have never really belonged anywhere.”

Her uncle nodded. “I thought as much,” he said. “Understand that I find no fault with a school. But when I found that you had practically lived in one all your life, I thought it was time for something else.”

Mr. Van Meter frowned and rubbed his hands together in a nervous way which he sometimes had. “How you came to be lost to us I can not understand at all. Why your grandmother did not notify us of your father’s death is another strange thing. Surely her undoubted jealousy of your poor mother would not go that far.”

“Oh, it didn’t, Uncle Pieter! I have a little note that says she had written.”

“And there was the matter of your grandfather’s legacy. Have you had that?”

“No, sir. I have Grandmother Eldon’s little fortune, enough to keep me in school. Then I thought perhaps I’d be a missionary.”

Mr. Van Meter’s frown changed into a smile. “I’ve no doubt you’d make a good one, Jannet, but suppose you try your missionary efforts here for a while.”

Jannet met her uncle’s eye. Actually there was a twinkle in it!

“At least it would be as well to stay with us until you are grown, Jannet, and we have a chance to clear everything up. Now your grandfather died before your mother did. That much is sure. We have a letter, or did have it, written by your mother the day we telegraphed about your grandfather’s passing. Then we received sad telegrams and orders for flowers, for she could not come, though we told her that it might be possible to wait for the funeral till she arrived. Your father wrote, also. Then there was silence, Jannet, a silence so long that we did not know what to make of it.

“It was not so strange that Jannet would not write often to me, for I was so much older and your mother, too, thought that I was interfering and dictatorial and I admit that I thought her impulsive and foolish. She thought that I did Andy a great injustice by my second marriage and matters were on an uneasy footing between us when she was married.”

This was the first mention of the second marriage that Jannet had heard, but she kept herself from showing any surprise.

“But that there should be no communication,” continued Mr. Van Meter, “was strange, particularly as I had written her that when she came home in the summer, we could arrange about anything she wanted and her own furniture. Father did an unusual thing, you see. He knew that he could not live a great while and while we had no inkling of that, for he was as active as ever, he divided the property, giving me the home place, giving Jannet another farm and certain bonds and securities which were sent her and which she received. Indeed, I sold the farm for her, with Father’s permission, after he finally overcame all our objections and said that he preferred to see how we would ‘carry on.’ Yet both of us reserved certain funds for Father. Such was the arrangement, and a very poor one from a parent’s standpoint, though Father was safe enough in trusting us.

“I had made a quick trip to Europe on business. My wife reported no letters from your mother on my return. I wrote, and received word that they had moved. I found the new address after considerable trouble. No one was there. A new family had moved in. The word was that all had died of the ‘flu’ or something of the sort. I heard several conflicting stories. The one nearest the truth, according to what I found out about you, was that your father, half ill, started East with you and that your mother died at the hospital, either before or after that time.”

“He told Grandmother that my mother had died,” Jannet supplied.

“I see. There is only one thing, Jannet, that has made me feel strange about it all, and that is a telegram that I found after a long time. Date and address were torn off. Some one in the household had made a mistake. It blew at my feet from some pile of rubbish back where it is burned.”

Mr. Van Meter pulled out a drawer in his desk and took from it a piece of yellow paper, such as is used in telegrams. He handed it to Jannet.

“If you feel so I can never again set foot in your house.” This was the message that the surprised Jannet read. She looked up into her uncle’s face in inquiry.

“Why, that reminds me of a slip of paper that I found in a book. Perhaps just your not replying to something may have made her send the telegram.”

“I did not think of that. I was away,—what was the slip of paper?”

Jannet handed to her uncle the slip which she had found. He frowned over it, reading it more than once and looking off into space as if trying to recall something. “I never saw that before, Jannet,” said he, handing it back to her. “This looks pretty serious, Jannet. It looks as if you owe to some unfriendly hand the fact that your mother was so separated from us and that you have been among strangers since your grandmother’s death.”

“Do you think that my mother could possibly be alive somewhere?”

“Of course I do not know the date of this telegram, but the word of her death seemed so clear that I never tried to trace the telegram after finding it. I would not cherish such a possibility, Jannet. Wherever she is, in that other world that she believed in, she will be glad that you are here, and I am glad to have an opportunity to make up to you what I seemed in her eyes to lack.” Mr. Van Meter spoke kindly, but a little bitterly at the last.

“Oh, I believe you, Uncle Pieter!” cried Jannet, stretching out a slender hand to him. He took it, patted it and let her draw it back as gently as she had given it. Then Jannet drew her chair closer and said, “Now may I take time to tell you what has been happening?”

“Yes, child. What is it?”

One entering the library would have seen an interesting picture for the next half hour. The eager Jannet leaned on the desk with both elbows, and a bright face rested between her two hands as she related to her uncle every detail of her ghostly experiences and told him all about the pearls. She was utterly forgetful of herself and her fear of her uncle. Indeed, that had left her for all time.

Mr. Van Meter, thoughtful, as always, listened, smiling a little from time to time, for Jannet told it all in her own vivid way, amused herself, at different times, especially when she told of how she and Nell listened at the boys’ door and of how funny Paulina looked in her night-cap.

At the close of the recital, Mr. Van Meter questioned her further about the pearls, as that seemed to be the most serious feature of the matter. “I feel sure that you will find Jan at the bottom of the ghost affair,” he said. “Of course, you could scarcely offend Paulina more than to express your disbelief in the family ghost. But if you and Nell want to investigate, you have my full permission, so far as you keep within safe bounds. I gather that the ghost has not offered to harm you in any way?”

“No, sir, even if it did want my comforters.”

“I fancy that there will not be any more ghostly visitations till the next time Jan is home, but let me know if there is one. I should like to enjoy it with you.”

Mr. Van Meter spoke so seriously that Jannet looked at him doubtfully. It was hard to tell what Uncle Pieter meant sometimes. But he wasn’t such a riddle as “Old P’lina,” anyhow.

“Well, don’t you think it possible, Uncle Pieter, that there is a secret passageway of some sort?”

“It is entirely possible, Jannet. I had no work done by the carpenters about the old chimney, though it was pointed up and had bricks renewed at its top. I am too busy now to do anything, but later I may be of some assistance. By the way, Jannet, did you know that Andy mounted a horse and rode with me quite a little? All at once his back seems to be better. The doctors said it might be so. Do you like Andy?”

“Oh, yes, Uncle Pieter! No one could help loving Cousin Andy.”

It was not until Jannet had left the library and her uncle that she recalled one thing which she had forgotten. She had not asked him how he had discovered her. But her doubts about her uncle were at rest. He was a peculiar man in some respects. Jannet felt that he was ashamed to show the least emotion, but she was sure that he had some feelings for all that. She might never love him as she could love her cousin Andy, but she respected him. More than ever Jannet felt herself a part of her mother’s family.

Hurrah for Jannet and Nell, the famous “deteckatives,” she thought, and before dinner she telephoned Nell to see how soon she could come over. “I’ve got lots of things to tell you, Nell,” she urged.

“I’d love to come to-day, Jannet,” Nell replied, “but we have company. I was just going to call you to see if you could ride over this afternoon. Can’t you?”

“Why, yes, I can, so far as I know now. I’ll call you later.”

Thus it happened that attic investigations were postponed; but the detective-in-chief sought an interview with one of the main “suspects” as soon as she could.