"Well, all right! If we must, we must, I suppose," said Sue. "I'd attempt 'most anything for the sake of solving this mystery. Suppose we read it aloud, turn and turn about. But for goodness sake, don't let's try to do it up here. We'll freeze. What if people _do_ see us with it? They'll probably only think we're reading it for study. The Imp might suspect something, but she--"
"See here! Why not _tell the Imp_? She's evidently found out a lot of things on her own hook, and she even said she might tell us about them some time, if she could. Perhaps we've got ahead of her on this. I'd just enjoy getting ahead of her for once! Let's tell her and see what happens."
It was now Sue's turn to demur. Carol was so insistent, however, that she finally gave a reluctant consent, and they went out to hunt up the Imp. A little triumphantly Sue led her younger sister up to the loft, and with just a touch of patronage she promised her the surprise of her life when she got there. But to their intense chagrin, the two girls found, as they had discovered many times before, that they had, so to speak, to get up very early in the morning to get ahead of the Imp.
"Look!" cried Carol, exhibiting the picture. "What do you think of that?"
The Imp gave it only one disdainful glance.
"Huh!" she sniffed. "Aren't you a little late in the day? I discovered the same thing about a month ago in the same book, or in one just like it!"
The two sat staring at her in stunned silence. Then Carol glanced at the book.
"It's so, Sue," she murmured. "It's the very same kind of a book that we saw her showing to Monsieur that day. Look at the light green cover."
It was indeed the same! But the Imp had had her triumph and now could afford to be magnanimous.
"Since you've discovered the same thing," she said, "I'll tell you how _I_ happened to come across it. Our teacher, Miss Hastings, recently brought and hung up in the schoolroom some pretty new pictures. One that I liked very much was called 'The Girl with the Muff.' One day I asked Miss Hastings something about it, and she told me who the artist was and said there was a book in the library about her, with pictures of her other paintings in it. Next day she brought the book to school and let me look at it. And, girls, it was this book, or one like it, and while I was looking it over I almost jumped out of my shoes to come across this very picture. I didn't say a word about it, though, but just went and joined the library and got the book out and read it all."