“And that?” he cried triumphantly. “What do you make of that?”

I only stared.

He slipped the quill into his pocket, and looked again at the scrap of white stuff.

“A fragment of a handkerchief?” he mused. “Perhaps you are right. But remember this⁠— a good laundry does not starch a handkerchief. ”

He nodded at me triumphantly, then he put away the scrap carefully in his pocketbook.