“Thank the Lord for gossipy women!” Josie exclaimed as she left the office of the nurses’ registrar, where she had readily engaged the young woman at the desk in a spirited discussion concerning the various nurses whose names were there registered.

It was a simple matter to find out that Miss Fitchet was considered an excellent nurse; also that she was thoroughly unpopular with her sister nurses. She was in demand, however, because of her steady nerves.

“Nothing knocks her out,” declared the registry clerk. “She wouldn’t mind holding a man’s legs while the doctor cut off his arm. Blood’s nothing more than water to her. Doctors like her because she attends strictly to business, but the patients get fed up on her. They say she isn’t human.”

All this was poured forth in a gushing stream, when Josie asked quite mildly if the girl happened to know a nurse by the name of Fitchet, explaining she did not know her personally but that she had some friends who knew her and they had suggested her as a person who might care for Josie’s great uncle (a purely fictitious person). The great uncle had not arrived in Louisville, but was expected shortly, and would perhaps need a nurse. Josie was not sure of this. She just thought she would step around and ask about Fitchet.

“She’s got a job just now in Florida—at least she did have one—but we’ve word from the party employing her that she has left them without giving notice and now they’re trying to have us send them another. It is no trouble for Fitchet to get a job, so I don’t mind telling you that if you love your great uncle, I wouldn’t fool with Fitchet. She’s liable to make him will her all his money and then starve him to death. I’ve heard plenty of patients say that she eats up the goodies sent to them right before their eyes, declaring they are too rich for sick folks. I don’t like her, and I don’t care who knows it. I don’t generally talk out this way to customers but I take such an interest in your poor, dear great uncle. She’d land the poor dear man in the grave in a month and then you’d find a will in her favor. She’s a slick one, with her head cocked on one side and a grin like a panther.”

“Did she come back to Louisville when she left the people in Florida?” asked Josie, laughing.

“Not yet! I reckon she’s frying fish somewheres else. But, young lady, if you are hunting a nurse you let me recommend a lovely girl I know. She’s as sweet as a peach and so accommodating she’ll cook and clean up if need be and wash out the baby’s little sacques and socks—and press his cap, strings and all.”

“But my great uncle doesn’t wear sacques and caps and I fancy he can get someone else to wash his socks,” teased Josie.

“Oh, yes, I forgot. I was thinkin’ ’twas a baby. Anyhow, don’t get Fitchet.”

“All right, I won’t,” agreed Josie.

“Won’t you leave your name and address?” suggested the girl. “My boss always wants folks to leave their names and addresses.”

“There’s hardly any use,” said Josie. “I’m not sure my great uncle is coming, and if he does it is but a step to come to your office and see you. I think a personal interview is so satisfactory. Don’t you? Besides, I shall enjoy seeing you again.”

The girl at the desk was flattered by Josie’s remarks and let her make her escape without further insistence concerning names and addresses.

“Well, I know where Fitchet isn’t, at least,” muttered Josie. “And now for Peewee Valley!”

The interurban car was on time and so was Josie. She could not help smiling when she remembered Aunt Mandy’s description of this car and her calling it the interbourbon. There were two men aboard who might very well keep up the alleged reputation of the line, as their hip pockets bulged suspiciously, and their gait suggested that they might have been imbibing quite freely.

The car filled rapidly with holiday makers and parties going to spend Christmas day in the country with relations and friends.

“I might feel sorry for myself if I wanted to,” thought Josie, “but somehow I don’t. Here I am having no Christmas to speak of, but feeling as chipper as you please, with a wonderfully interesting day ahead of me. Poor Ursula is the one who may well feel sorry for herself, but I am as sure as anything I’ll find Philip, and that before so very long. But the motive for stealing him—what can it be? Ursula is as poor as a church mouse. If it only wasn’t Christmas I’d sleuth around and find out something about Cheatham’s business and his financial standing.”

So Josie mused as those on Christmas pleasure bent squeezed her into a corner of the car. She was thankful to have a seat next the window, although at first the prospect of dirty snow and empty streets was not so very pleasing.

The trolley soon whizzed through the city into the suburbs and then into open country, past pleasant homes where prosperity was the keynote. Now the snow was clean and, wherever it had drifted aside, instead of a bare brown patch, green grass met the eye, as is the way in Kentucky. Blue grass will remain green through the winter under the snow.

Peewee Valley was remarkable for its wonderful beech trees, and the fact that it was not a valley at all. In truth the trolley seemed to be going up grade. The sun, which had seemed nothing but a round orange through the smoke and fog of Louisville, was now shining brilliantly, but the mercury was steadily falling in spite of old Sol and the air was crisp and bracing. Josie remembered Mandy’s directions and stopped the car at the post office.

“That must be Colonel Trask’s,” she decided, standing for a moment in the snow as the trolley whizzed out of sight, and gazing across the road at a pleasant looking home well back from the road, approached by an avenue bordered by maple trees. They were bare and gaunt on that winter’s morning, but it was not difficult to picture them in full leaf shading the road. Indeed, here and there was a bench which, though covered with snow, made one think instinctively of summer days.

The snow had been beaten down to a hard path on one side of the road and the road itself gave evidence of much travel—prints of horses’ hoofs and of automobile tires. The house, which could be seen from the approach, was white with grey gabled roof, the sky line much broken with dormer windows and great red chimneys. Josie counted five, with smoke curling from every one of them.

A sudden sound of sleigh bells and trotting horses! Josie was in a brown study, trying to untangle the web woven around Ursula Ellett. She found it difficult to fix her thoughts, since the general appearance of the hospitable home she was approaching made her think, in spite of herself, of roast turkey and goose, plum pudding and mince pies, bulging Christmas stockings and fir trees blazing with candles. The sound of sleigh bells made her jump. She felt almost that Santa Claus himself was coming. So swiftly were the horses drawing the red cutter over the beaten snow they had passed her almost before she could collect her scattered senses.

“Whoa!” commanded the driver, stopping his team a few feet beyond the spot where Josie stood rooted in the snow. “Have a ride?”

The driver was a young man of engaging manner and wonderfully even teeth. That was the first impression made on Josie. Afterwards she realized that he was an exceedingly handsome young Kentuckian, blue-eyed, straight-nosed, clean cut and athletic.

“Certainly!” She answered his invitation without hesitation. Female detectives cannot afford to be squeamish, but it was not a detective who sprang so readily into the red cutter—rather a young girl away from home on Christmas morning, in whose ears the music of the sleigh bells played an alluring tune and who was, in spite of the serious business that had brought her to Louisville, longing for companionship.

“Where are you going?” asked the young man. “I can take you wherever it is, because my horses are eating their heads off in the stable and are as wild to be up and out and racing as I am. I came on you so suddenly I couldn’t tell which way you were headed.”

“This way,” pointed Josie. “I am hunting some colored people. The woman makes rag rugs and the man brooms. I was directed through Colonel Trask’s place. I am on the right road, am I not?”

“You are indeed. Colonel Trask is my father. But why hunt rag rug and broom makers on Christmas morning?”

“Because—but—oh, please tell me, are you Teddy?”

“The same—and you?”

Josie looked into the kind, clear, boyish, blue eyes and determined to trust their owner with her story. “I am Ursula Ellett’s friend and I’m not really very much interested in rag rugs and brooms.”

The eyes hardened from blue to ice.

“Ah, indeed!” he said with cold politeness.

“I want to see your mother and father. Ursula—”

“Miss Ellett is well, I hope.”

“As well as could be expected, considering she is among strangers, making a living for herself and her two little brothers and now the younger brother, little Philip, has been stolen from her. Yes, very well, thank you. I see I was mistaken in thinking Mr. Theodore Trask was her friend, and since I have evidently touched on an uninteresting subject, I shall ask you to stop your horses and let me get out.”

Josie was angry—so angry she felt it almost impossible to refrain from slapping the handsome face of her driver. His “Miss Ellett is well, I hope,” was what had aroused her anger. The tone with which he had made the seemingly harmless remark had enraged Josie, and the usually calm little detective was in a boiling passion.

The icy eyes melted a little, but the young man made no movement towards stopping the horses. Instead, he turned them sharply around in the avenue and headed them for the open road. With a word of encouragement the beautiful creatures were urged to greater speed. Josie was compelled to grasp her companion’s arm to steady herself. A seat in an open cutter is a precarious one when a reckless driver and his horses are feeling too full of pep.

Josie took a long breath. She couldn’t help enjoying the sensation of being forcibly carried off by an ice king, even though she did hate his superciliousness.