BARBARA HALE: A DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER




[Illustration: “OH,” GASPED BABS, “I DIDN’T KNOW——”]




                            BARBARA HALE:
                         A DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER

                                  By
                             LILIAN GARIS

                              Author of
             “BARBARA HALE AND COZETTE,” “CONNIE LORING’S
               AMBITION,” “JOAN: JUST GIRL,” “GLORIA: A
                    GIRL AND HER DAD,” “GLORIA AT
                        BOARDING SCHOOL,” ETC.

                            ILLUSTRATED BY
                             J. M. FOSTER

                           GROSSET & DUNLAP
                        PUBLISHERS    NEW YORK

                 Made in the United States of America




                        Books by Lilian Garis

                  Joan: Just Girl
                  Joan’s Garden of Adventure
                  Gloria: A Girl and Her Dad
                  Gloria at Boarding School
                  Connie Loring’s Ambition
                  Connie Loring’s Dilemma
                  Barbara Hale: A Doctor’s Daughter
                  Barbara Hale and Cozette

                         Copyright, 1926, by
                           GROSSET & DUNLAP




                               CONTENTS

                      I Sea Sands and Somersaults
                     II When the Day Arrived
                    III Her Father’s Daughter
                     IV On Her Way
                      V Billows the Beautiful
                     VI The Accident
                    VII Nicky and Vicky
                   VIII Clothes
                     IX Suspicions
                      X How Girls Choose Chums
                     XI The Midnight Ride
                    XII Dumped but Not Discouraged
                   XIII Crazy Quilts Galore
                    XIV A Honeysuckle Secret
                     XV The Santa Maria
                    XVI When a Girl Thinks Hard
                   XVII The Loss
                  XVIII Suspicions
                    XIX News from Nicky
                     XX Fighting It Out
                    XXI Brighter but Not Quite Clear
                   XXII Washington Answers
                  XXIII Prolonging the Agony
                   XXIV Scouts in the Wood
                    XXV A Revelation
                   XXVI Tumbling In




BARBARA HALE: A DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER


CHAPTER I

SEA SANDS AND SOMERSAULTS


They dug their heels deeper into the white sand. As they were bare
heels there seemed to be nothing else to do with them.

“I think it’s simply a wonderful idea,” Louise St. Clair reiterated,
“only, I can’t just see how you are going to feed us all for three
whole days, Cara.”

“Feed you! Dear child, that’s the easiest part of it. Lottie adores
feeding the hungry. But what bothers me is what I can do to keep you
all happy.” Cara Burke, who had never been called Caroline, took her
heels out of the sand and stuck them up in the sunshine. She was so
strictly modern and so much up to date that her own personal schedule
must have been eons ahead of the time marked on the pretty calendars
sent around by M. Helmer, the butcher.

“A house party is bound to make us all so happy we’ll never want to go
home, Cara,” declared Esther Deane, she with a new boyish bob hair-cut
that she couldn’t keep her hands off. “I’d like to fetch my trunk, if
we only lived a few blocks farther away.”

“Fetch it; there’re bushels of room out in the garage,” responded Cara
mischievously. “But you know, children, my list isn’t filled yet. I
have just got to have Barbara Hale.”

“Barbara Hale!” Both girls exclaimed in perfect unison.

“Yes.” Cara squatted on her bare feet now and showed signs of
conflict. “I want her. I like her. She’s so different, she’s sure to
be good fun.”

“Good fun!” Esther almost sneered. “About as funny as a Latin exam,
I’d guess. She looks different, and she is different. But at a house
party! Cara, you’re crazy.”

“So they say,” agreed Cara dryly. “But I’m going to ask her, just the
same.”

“She’ll never leave that dad of hers,” declared Louise. “You know he’s
some kind of a queer doctor and they say she’s going to be a nurse.”

“He’s a bacteriologist,” Esther informed her friends, with that very
definite tone always peculiarly Esther’s when she knew anything so
worth while as that.

“Well,” drawled Cara, “Dudley says she’s a peach, and while he’s not
to come to the party he might just look in and——”

“And poor us! We may have to rival a peach,” moaned Louise. “I do wish
you wouldn’t, Cara,” she pleaded again. “Honestly, I am afraid of
anything so high and mighty as Barbara Hale.”

“Why should she be so high and mighty?” challenged Cara. “She’s no
older than we are.”

“She’s past fifteen, I should think,” guessed Esther.

“I suppose she is, for she was in first year high last summer when we
came back to Sea Cosset; I remember that,” agreed Cara quite amicably.
Cara wasn’t merely pretty, she was lively always, and her brown eyes
managed her entire face so capably one never noticed the little
irregularity of her other features. Every one said Cara Burke was “all
eyes” and her eyes were lovely.

“It’s queer how every one thinks Barbara is so wonderful,” Esther was
determined to find fault. “She just acts like an old lady, it seems to
me.”

“Esther Phester! How dare you!” mocked Cara. “Now, you’re being
jealous. You see, it’s like this. There are lots of wise old ladies
but a wise young lady is different.”

“You talk rather wise yourself and you’re not so old,” retorted
Louise.

“I am old. I love to be. Children are a pest, so please don’t act so
childish, girls,” Cara in turn retorted. “You’re both perfectly lovely
when you talk sensibly, so let’s decide how we are going to get the
wily Barbara to our house party. Any suggestions?”

Persons just sauntering along for a rather late swim attracted their
attention, and for the time being Barbara Hale was apparently
forgotten. New and odd bathing suits were ever interesting to the
girls, and those at the moment being displayed were certainly novel if
not actually new.

“How can red-headed girls wear that howling yellow?” commented Louise.
“She looks like a gasoline sign.” Her own hair favored the red tints,
what there was of it.

“That tango is worse,” declared Esther. “They must be strangers.”

“Just wandered down from the other beach, I guess,” Cara said
indifferently. She was never as much interested in strangers as were
her two friends.

Settling down again to finish their sunning, for they had had their
swim some time earlier, the subject of Barbara Hale was once more
introduced.

“I don’t see that you girls are helping me out very much with my guest
list,” Cara reminded them. “You know I am bound to have Barbara. Now,
I’ll offer a prize for the best suggestion. How shall I invite her?”

“Why not ‘hail’ her down here?” Louise suggested.

“Now, Louie; that’s being too smart; to pun on Barbara’s name,”
answered Cara. “The fact is, or isn’t it? Does she come down here,
ever?”

“It isn’t, she doesn’t. You don’t catch that smart girl wasting her
time on the beach.” As Esther said this she seemed to enjoy the saying
of it.

“I’d like to know, Essie,” drawled Cara, using the little name Esther
detested, “what have _you_ against Barbara Hale?”

“I!” How much she made of the smallest word! As if the idea were
preposterous.

“Yes, you. Every time I mention Barbara you just seethe up.” Cara
tossed up a shower of sand that slipped through her fingers in little
streams—what was left of the shower did that. If, as she said, Esther
did dislike Barbara, surely she, Cara, must have liked her, decidedly.

Esther didn’t try to answer the charge. They were, all three of them,
just at that stage of young girlhood that might be called the mimic
stage. They said smart things, or tried to say them, because older
girls acted that way. True, the older girls never deigned to associate
with Cara, and her “set.” Just “kids” they were still being
inelegantly styled. But girls in second year high do feel rather
important, and at this particular new summer season the three girls on
the beach at Sea Cosset were not one whit less important—in their own
way—than Elinor Towle, Katherine Barrett and Melinde Trainor, all over
twenty, and now sitting on the same cozy little beach nearer the
water. Merely degrees of difference separated them, but there seemed
nothing essentially different between the two groups.

And to make the comparison still closer, here was Cara planning to
give a house party.

“I don’t care what any one says,” Louise spoke up rather like a small
girl again, “it’s a perfectly darling idea. Even if we all do live
around here; what difference would a train ride make in a house
party?”

“None; not a speck,” confirmed Esther, both the girls bracing Cara up
in her resolve to give the party and worrying secretly lest she back
out.

“Except,” chimed in Cara, “that when they come a distance they have to
stay. If you girls get bored to death you could even sneak home in
your nighties,” she wound up, turning a very good hand-spring to prove
why she was such a fine basketball player.

“No danger of _us_ sneaking home, Cara,” declared Louise. “I’m just
crazy about the idea. And I know there are a lot of girls jealous
because you didn’t ask them,” she flattered the prospective hostess.

“Really!” Cara reversed the hand-spring and threw up a veritable
desert sandstorm with the turn. “The only reason I have asked just
five,” she panted, settling again, “is because mother would only let
me have three rooms.”

“Just imagine having _three_ rooms for company!” gasped Esther. “I’m
lucky to get an extra cot in my own room and the attic privilege while
we’re down here. But _you_ can invite a whole tribe to stay days with
you.”

“Now girls!” spoke Cara, sighing a little as if in despair at their
attitude, “don’t get the idea that a big house and a flock of servants
make a lot of fun. They don’t. We had better times when we camped in a
lovely wide-open bungalow out on the bluff, where you didn’t dare
leave the front door open without danger of blowing out at the back
door. Oh me, oh my!” she sighed. “Them was the days! When I ate
molasses cookies without fear of fatness. But we are not getting at
the important point of asking Barbara. Haven’t you anything else to
propose? It will be time to dress before we decide a single thing.”

“Why not call on her? She’s not anything to be afraid of, is she?”
This was Esther, of course.

“No.” Cara paused, thoughtfully. “But she is, I know, a busy girl, and
one doesn’t want to ‘bust’ in on a high-brow just as she’s in the act
of discovering some scientific—oh, whatever it is they discover, you
know,” she floundered. “Besides, it would look so important if I
called. As if my party was really going to be a party instead of a
row. I’m sure it will end in a row, you know,” Cara was prettiest when
she laughed.

“Cara Burke! You just want to make believe it isn’t going to be
wonderful when you know very well it is,” pouted Louise. “But if you
want Barbara Hale so badly, I’ll manage somehow to see her, and I’ll
ask her if you want me to.”

“Want you to! I’d _love_ you to. I just want Barbara, well, for more
than one reason, but _one_ is because Dud declares she wouldn’t bother
with such silly little things as he claims we are. I want to show
him.”

“Oh, that’s it.” Esther’s lip curled and she was now acting very grown
up indeed.

“Does Dud know Barbara?” Louise wanted to know.

“That’s just it. She’s sort of, what he calls, elusive. They just know
her enough to be curious about her.”

“I don’t think she’s so wonderfully pretty,” commented Esther again.
“And I’m certain sure she’s not rich!”

“Esther Phester!” cried out Cara in mock despair. “There you go. Rich!
That isn’t what counts at all, not with boys like Dud, anyway. _They_
like girls who keep them guessing.”

“Oh, Barbara Hale can do that well enough,” scoffed Esther. “Isn’t she
keeping us guessing?”

“Just because she keeps to herself,” retorted Cara. “Now, that’s just
why I’m so crazy to know her. There must be a reason for her, oh, you
know,” again stumbled Cara, who wanted to say there must have been a
reason for Barbara’s aloofness, or was it reticence?

“Since you are so keen about it Cara, I’ll do my best,” offered
Louise. “You know, her father is a sort of doctor and has some of the
awfully rich folks on his list.”

“Rich!” moaned Cara. She seemed to loathe the word. They were starting
off towards the boardwalk along which a slim line of girls and boys
were already winding their way towards the road. It was almost lunch
time.

Just as the girls came to within a few feet of the roadway a small car
drew up and from it sprang two persons.

“Look!” gasped Louise. “There she is now!”

“Is that—Barbara!” exclaimed Cara in an undertone, for the two in
bathing suits—a young girl and a young man—were racing along through
the sands quite close to them.

“Yes,” answered Esther and Louise in one voice.

“Isn’t she stunning in a bathing suit?” continued the entranced Cara.
“She must be dandy at athletics.” The two figures under scrutiny were
now far enough away to be out of possible reach of the girls’ voices.
Barbara Hale was wearing the regulation blue bathing suit with white
stripes around the long Jersey and a loose sash flew along after her
as she ran towards the ocean. She was trying to adjust her rubber cap
as she went, and was just now crowding into it a closely bobbed head,
chestnut in color, that beautiful brown that glows and glistens and
lights up so wonderfully in the sunshine. Barbara was as slender and
straight as an Indian. Her limbs were innocent of stockings or socks,
for girls under sixteen were not now trying to be prim at Sea Cosset,
that is, girls like Barbara.

“But who can the good-looking boy be?” Louise wondered. “Isn’t he
just—just——”

“Not lovely,” warned Cara. “Please don’t call him anything so silly as
that. He’s fine looking, just great. Whew! Look at those two strike
out!”

Dots on the waves were all that could now be seen of the two who were
ducking in and out of the crest, but the girls still watched as if
fascinated.

“Better ask him to the party, Cara,” suggested Esther. “I’ll bet all
the girls would want to stay if he were around.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” proposed the wily Cara. “I’ll tell
Dudley I’ll have Barbara to the party if he manages to fetch along the
good-looking boy. I’ve just decided to give a dance. Why shouldn’t we
have a dance?” she asked simply, with one of those sudden strokes of
social genius she was especially noted for.

“A dance!” echoed Louise, in ecstasy. She did clasp her hands but
caught herself just in time to save that foolish expression Cara was
sure to call saintly. Louise was very apt to clasp her hands, throw
one of those heavenly looks out of her gray eyes, and altogether
affect quite a pose when anything suddenly pleased her.

“Yes, a dance,” Cara repeated. “We are grown up enough for that,
although we couldn’t, of course, ask the boys to the house party. They
_could_ come in to the dance.”

“Just look at Barbara Hale now,” suggested Esther. The figures were
shaking themselves out of the waves, and as the girls watched they saw
Barbara put her two hands on a big post that supported the ropes, and
vault over as easily as did her companion following her. “Don’t you
suppose he’s her cousin?” Esther asked, innocently.

“Not necessarily,” replied Cara. “But if we don’t make a break for
lunch——” They made the break.




                              CHAPTER II

                         WHEN THE DAY ARRIVED


Between that day at the beach and the day set for the first session to
the house party, Cara all but backed out several times. It was rather
absurd, to ask five girls to week-end at her lovely big home, the
Billows, to bring clothes enough for three days and to stay for almost
that length of time, when they all lived near enough to run home if
their mothers should call them—on the telephone.

But from the time that Cara mentioned the brilliant idea to Louise and
Esther, she was not allowed to change her mind. There is not a great
deal of excitement for girls of their ages at little sea-coast towns,
and the prospects of a house party were far too precious to
relinquish.

Mrs. Burke, Cara’s mother, was rather pleased that her athletic
daughter thought of anything so socially refining, for, as a rule,
Cara cared very little for the amenities. She liked, very much better,
to row their boat on the lake that always seemed to envy the wild
little wavelets that flew about the ocean’s edge, or she might stay on
the golf links all day with her dad, who believed in golf for girls as
well as for boys, and there was only Dudley at Burke’s to share honors
with his sister Cara.

So now that the day of the party was actually at hand, Cara felt like
“laughing her head off,” as she described her unusual emotions.

“If it wasn’t that I just made this chance to get acquainted with
Barbara Hale, Moma,” (she always called her mother Moma because it
means soft, in Celtic,) “I would be apt to think myself silly. But
it’s worth while to meet Barbara.”

“Why is she so difficult and desirable?” asked Mrs. Burke, who might
be Moma or “soft” to her daughter, but as a woman seemed quite the
opposite. She was capable of formality, fine, dignified yet lovely
with just that charm that all mothers should possess.

“Well,” replied Cara to her question, as she settled a final bunch of
snap-dragons on the long davenport table in the living-room, “to tell
you the truth, Moma, she’s a bit mysterious.”

“A girl—mysterious; how?”

“Oh, in a lot of ways. I couldn’t just tell you, darling, but they’re
plenty. Wait until you meet her,” she promised archly. “I’m sure you
will call her perfect; I believe all the grown-ups do. She’s said to
be so sensible.”

“Not too sensible, I hope,” qualified Mrs. Burke, who liked girls to
be girls and not Minervas.

“No. My own idea is that the sensible stuff is just a pose to keep the
girls away. She’s not cranky, I know that. I met her at the Community
Club last week,” continued Cara, who was now donning her white sport
coat, preparing for a race in town. “At any rate, Moma, I’m sure it
will do me a lot of good to know her,” she just nipped a make-believe
kiss on her mother’s cheek. “She might inspire me with a little
sense.”

“Oh, you’re not so bad, my dear,” replied the proud mother, surveying
Cara affectionately. “But I am really anxious to meet the paragon.”

A half-hour later Cara was being surrounded at the post office; the
girls who were shortly to be her guests formed the circle. She had
just told them that Barbara was coming.

“How ever did you get her?” demanded Louise.

“As easy as easy,” teased Cara. “All I did was just give the operator
the number and Barbara answered.” Cara was plainly proud of the
conquest.

“And she said she’d come? Right off?” asked Esther in uncovered
surprise.

“Said she would _love_ to, not what you might call exactly ‘right off’
but after her father had urged her to. He calls her Babs and they seem
to be great chums,” Cara finished, trying to break away from the party
and reach her mail-box.

“Oh, they are,” agreed Louise. “That’s just what makes her so
different. She’s always chumming with her father. Isn’t that queer?”

“Not so very,” said Cara dryly. “Dad and I are pretty good chums. But
I’ve got to rush or I won’t be at the front door to greet you when you
arrive,” and she did break away this time.

“Cara!” called Lida Bent, a new girl in Sea Cosset, “shall we really
bring our suit-cases?”

“Just as you like,” answered Cara, mischievously stepping back to make
her remarks safe for Lida’s ears only. “If you want to carry your
pajamas on your arm _I_ have no objection. There really isn’t any
obligation to carry suit-cases.”

“Now Cara,” blushed little Lida who was a dainty blonde and blushed
prettily, “you know I don’t mean that.”

“Well, Lida, you may bring a steamer trunk if you like,” joked Cara,
“only be sure to come. That’s the big idea,” and Cara Burke, the
heroine of the day with a house party only a few hours off, clutched
her bundle of morning mail as she escaped from her admiring friends.

Cara was always such a lark, they each and all were sure to be
thinking, and to give this affair simply sealed that opinion.

Louise, Esther, and Lida sauntered off with their own post office
material, but this today seemed less interesting than usual.

“I didn’t know whether to fetch my corduroy or silk robe,” said
Louise. “If we go romping around I suppose the silk——”

“Will be too thin,” Esther finished laughingly. “You’re lucky, Louie,
to have two down with you. Mother just won’t allow any duplicates in
my clothes. She hates baggage so.”

“A robe?” repeated Lida. “Why, I hadn’t thought of that. Of course we
must fetch robes,” she repeated showing alarm that the idea had almost
escaped her.

“That’s mostly what a house party is for,” Louise continued. “To show
off our pretty things. Although,” she hurried to atone for the
possible boast, “I don’t pretend to have _pretty_ things, they’re
just—just useful of course,” she ended trying hard to be sensible.

“There’s Ruth!” exclaimed Esther, as a girl with a big box turned a
corner and walked towards them. “I’ll bet _she’s_ got a new robe. Look
at that box.”

“’Low girls!” called out Ruth Harrison, a tall girl who walked with a
swinging stride. “I had to go shopping the last minute, and I’m dead.
Whew! It’s hot carrying bundles,” and she took off her hat to prove
it.

“A new robe? We were just talking about robes,” said Esther. “It’s
hard to know whether we ought to fetch bungalow aprons or—or ulsters.
Cara may have some kind of a midnight parade on, she’s such a joker.”

“Robe!” repeated Ruth. “Say, I never thought of a robe. This is a new
party dress; Cara told me about the dance only yesterday. But a robe!”
Ruth look dismayed. Her frank, eager face was suddenly changed into a
question mark. What should she do about a new robe? She had one, of
course, but probably not one worthy of Cara’s party.

“Don’t bother,” suggested Louise, noticing Ruth’s perplexity, “you can
just duck in and out——”

“Ye-ah! While you all parade. I can see that. But do you mean to tell
me I’ve got to wear my Indian blanket? It’s one I had at camp and I
love it——”

“Why don’t you? That would be fun,” spoke up Louise, brightly.

“The very thing and I’ll bring—— But never mind the details,” Ruth
suddenly drew up, getting a better grip on her box. “I’ll be there
with my blanket. I’ve got to rush. I want an ocean bath first.”

“Isn’t she funny?” remarked Lida, as Ruth dashed off.

“She’d love a thing forever, even an Indian blanket,” said Louise,
rather complimentary to Ruth.

“And an ocean bath today! Just as if she couldn’t have that every
day,” murmured Esther as they were again on their way.

“I hope she didn’t get a rose-colored dress, that’s my color,” went on
Louise. “And if two of us were dressed alike at that small party we’d
look like twins or something,” she finished, tittering happily at the
idea.

“Ruth is so much, so sort of—a lot,” Esther ventured, “she’s almost
twins herself. But here’s where we part. Be ready at three and we’ll
all go in our big car.”

“In style,” added Lida. “It’s lovely you have a big car, Esther.”

“And a good-natured mother,” added Louise. “I suppose she gave up
something, to drive for us this lovely afternoon.”

“She was glad to give it up,” confessed Esther, “for it’s a meeting on
the summer exhibit. I can’t see why towns always have to do summer
things that keep folks so busy.”

“Because there are not enough folks to do things in winter,” said
little Lida quietly. “Mother’s on a committee and she thinks it’s
going to be fine.”

“I guess they’ve got all our mothers on,” grumbled Louise. “But we
always have to have something every summer. Well, good-bye for a
while,” as they reached the little dividing park, “and I’ll be ready,
Esther.”

“Don’t forget your robe,” called out Esther jokingly, for their robes
had suddenly become an all-important item in the house-party
programme.




                             CHAPTER III

                        HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER


In a house that hid behind friendly old trees cuddled in trumpet vines
and tender, little trailing things, Barbara Hale and her father, Dr.
Winthrop Hale, lived. It was just off the road that stretched into the
newly settled summer place called by the land developers Sea Cosset. A
fanciful name indeed, and its choice had caused much discussion, for
as every one with access to a dictionary soon discovered, cosset means
pet and is usually applied to a little lamb.

“Sea Lamb,” scoffed the old sailors who brought their nets in from the
ocean at the road’s turn.

“Why didn’t they call it ‘the kid,’ and be done with it,” Thom Merrill
wanted to know. Thom had sold all his land to the enterprising
development company, and now he had nothing else to do but criticize
their choice of name for the new colony.

“But you’re all wrong,” declared Mary-Louise Trainor, who was the
“bookiest” woman in the county. “We chose the name because it
literally means that the sea fondles, loves, yes if you like——” she
flung this defiantly into Thom Merrill’s red face—“the sea _pets_ the
land at this pretty little point, and Sea Cosset is a perfectly ideal
name.”

“Sure is,” agreed Thom, chuckling so audibly that Mary-Louise turned
away in evident disgust at that memorable meeting held three years ago
last spring. Then Sea Cosset was cut away from the surrounding
territory by its fancy name, a number of pretty bungalows, the land
agents’ promise to build more “of any design desired as fast as they
would be applied for,” not to mention all the other well-advertised
improvements of a new summer place as compared with its well-seasoned,
comfortable old town of Landing.

Strange that all of this would have anything to do with Cara Burke’s
house party. But it had, for Barbara Hale and her beloved “Dads,” the
doctor, were this very day admitting they should have sold their land,
or some of it, to that company that developed Sea Cosset.

“Then, my dear Babs,” said father, regretfully, “you might have
afforded proper things for your party.”

“But I don’t need them, really, Dads; I’ve got lots of clothes,”
protested the daughter. “It’s just that these different affairs
require different things.”

Which explanation meant not a thing, in the way of an explanation, for
it plainly stated that Barbara Hale did not have things ready for a
house party.

On the floor of her quaintly old-fashioned bedroom, Barbara was now
packing her suit-case. And only the suit-case that lay there
helplessly could have seen or understood the expression on her face,
for the bag had more than once witnessed that same look as Barbara
leaned over, putting things in and taking them out, anxiously.

“She’s worried but she’s brave,” would have been the verdict could the
leather case have spoken.

“But she’s plucky and she’ll never never give in to silly little
clothes,” the comb and brush might easily have confided to each other.

“And you don’t know, Dads, what a perfectly stunning pair of pajamas I
have,” the girl leaning over the bag spoke up finally. “You know, dear
old Mrs. Seaman sent them to me for Christmas; wasn’t that lucky?”

“It was,” replied the tall, thin man sullenly. “And if it hadn’t been
for dear old Mrs. Seaman,” he was adding irony to every word, “I
suppose you wouldn’t have that perfectly stunning pair of slippers,
either.” More irony, more sarcasm, and teams of bitterness sharpened
Dr. Hale’s words. He was blaming himself, only, and was therefore free
to be as cruel as he wished about it.

“Dads,” coaxed Barbara, jumping up from her packing and confronting
the ogre, “you’re being mean.” She was standing there before him in
her big white bungalow apron—this was _her_ idea of a practical
bathrobe—and her eyes, always the deepest blue, were now so truly
violet that their shadows were almost purple.

Certainly Barbara had a remarkable face—every feature matched up so
perfectly—but the two most striking were her pallor, for one of her
type, which she left untinted; and the deep violet of her eyes. She
looked foreign or rather classic, with a firmness about her expression
hardly fair to her youth. Her nose was very straight with that
sculptured curve at her nostrils that made one think of a Greek
statue—or a young colt, depending entirely upon Barbara’s mood.

Just now she was being the colt, and Dr. Hale, her indulgent father,
was well aware of that mood.

“We should have sold off some of our land, Babs,” he repeated, coming
back to her door and intoning the words like a verdict for some one
doomed.

“We should not, Dads,” she contradicted. “Just because I haven’t a few
brand new rags for a silly little party, you stand there bewailing our
misery.” Her words were serious enough but her tone was bantering.
Barbara was determined to cheer up the gloomy man before her.

“Well, all right,” he conceded, tapping his fingers impatiently on her
door jamb and thereby drawing one’s attention to its shabby paint.
“But I’m glad you’re going. Do you good,” he pronounced, again in that
judicial tone.

“Maybe,” scoffed Barbara. “But I wouldn’t have gone a single step if
it hadn’t been for that Cara Burke.” Barbara ignored her packing
completely now. “She’s the nicest girl, Dads, really a thoroughbred. I
just couldn’t refuse her.” The inference was plainly that she
preferred to have refused even Cara.

“And why should you refuse?” demanded Dr. Hale. “Look here, Babs,” he
spoke a little sharply. “Do you know this won’t do? I won’t have folks
talking about you as if I—as if I were depriving you of—of
everything.”

“Dadykins!” Barbara burst out, and all the pallor of her face was now
dyed with an angry flush. “Who has said that? Whose business is it
what we do or how we live? Just because I _want_ to keep to myself
more than other girls do, they think I’m being deprived of—of what?”
she ended bitterly, and it was easy to see now that she was very much
her father’s daughter.

“There now, don’t get excited,” placated the doctor. “I’m sure _no_
one was talking about us, dear. Do hurry your packing,” he urged
anxiously. “Dora has lunch ready and we must not get _her_ wrought
up,” he ended wearily. “Dora’s our stand-by,” he pointed out
emphatically.

“But it does make me so mad, Dad,” Barbara echoed. “To have folks
always slurring——”

“But they were _not_, dear.” He raised his voice irritably. “I merely
guessed that they might.”

Still in her bungalow apron and with her arms bare, Barbara answered
Dora’s call to lunch. She was excited. Not on account of her father’s
words, which really had amounted to nothing unusual, but because she
had to go to that party. And she hadn’t the right things to wear.

The little meal was not, apparently, being much appreciated, for both
Barbara and her father were entirely preoccupied, as Dora passed from
one to the other the slighted food.

Suddenly the jangling telephone startled them.

“I’ll go,” offered Barbara. “Take your tea, Dads.”

It was Cara Burke calling.

“Yes, yes,” Barbara answered. “That’s awfully good of you, Cara, but I
am honestly on the point of sending my very late regrets. I really
should not have accepted.”

“Why Barbara!” almost shrieked Cara at the other end of the wire but
the telephone voice was of course, pouring into Barbara’s ear, “I just
couldn’t have the party without you. You’ve got to come. Don’t mind
about the little dance,” went on distracted Cara. “I shouldn’t have
told you only I thought you would want to know.”

“I do, Cara. And it’s lovely of you to call me up.” Barbara hesitated.
Cara had just called her to say there would be a little dance and she
might want to fetch something different for it. And that had added to
Barbara’s misery, for what had she different to take?

Long and ardent pleas and protestations were coming over the wire, for
Cara had counted much upon the presence of Barbara at her party, but
now, at the last moment, the much-desired one was hesitating.

There was no questioning the sincerity of Cara Burke. Unspoiled by all
her advantages, she was so worth-while a girl that Barbara found it
very difficult indeed to ignore her advances.

“It’s so good of you,” Barbara repeated. “But you see, I——” she
paused, and instantly Cara filled the gap.

“You know, my brother Dudley thinks you and your friend Glenn are just
about right,” Cara chuckled, “and he promised to get Glenn to come to
our little dance if _I_ could get you to come to the party.”

“Really!” laughed Barbara. “Glenn’s an awful stick—I mean he’s what we
call a real stude, student you know,” Barbara explained. “But is he
going?”

“Dud says he is, and that’s why you really couldn’t disappoint me; now
could you, Barbara?”

“After all that? It would be ungrateful I know, Cara. But clothes—”

“I understand perfectly, Babs,” Cara was saying, using the endearing
name with telling effect. “You don’t pay much attention to clothes.
Couldn’t I lend you a little dress? You are just about my size and
I’ve so many useless frocks that mother loves to buy. Wouldn’t you
wear one just out of charity? It would really be a blessing to air the
stuff.”

What could Barbara say to such an impulsive, generous girl? Well, that
was just what she did say, and when she finally left the phone and
returned to the table, her face had lost its look of perplexity.

“Well, Dads,” she exclaimed, beaming so merrily that her dark eyes
threatened to ignite, “I guess I’m in for it now. Cara is bound to
play me up, although why she’s so keen I can’t see.”

“I can,” replied her father grimly. “And look here, Barbara Hale,” he
continued, using her name to emphasize his seriousness, “I’m glad
you’re going. It’s highly important that you should go. It’s all very
well to be a high-brow——”

“High-brow! Me, a high-brow?”

“Exactly. What do you think a good student ever becomes if not
intelligent?”

“But I want to know—just certain things——”

“Exactly again. That’s just how one becomes a high-brow. If you had
scattered interests, Babs dear, it would be different. But when one
concentrates one achieves.”

“Daddy, don’t you want me to study?” Barbara’s voice was pleading, her
eyes misty.

“Yes, daughter, of course I do,” replied the father, himself softening
his tone until it matched Barbara’s. “But this summer I want you to go
out with your friends. In fact, I want you to promise me that you will
set aside everything in the way of study for this summer.” He went
over to where she stood and put his hands upon her shoulders so that
his look completely encompassed her. “You are so like your mother now,
my dear——”

“And mother loved the same things I do,” quickly defended Barbara, in
turn putting her hands on his shoulders.

“Yes, but not at your age,” he argued.

A silence fell between them. The man whose shoulders were straight as
a soldier’s, in spite of his bending over with constant research work,
was now thinking of Barbara’s mother. She was gone. Her devotion to
nursing during the war had cost her her life with the deadly influenza
then ravaging the camps among America’s flower of youth. She had been
a nurse, just as Barbara was now determined to be, and the research
work in bacteriology, which was Dr. Hale’s chosen field, had been as
fascinating to her as it now threatened to become to Barbara.

“Do you mean, Dads, that we shouldn’t do any more experiments this
summer?” his daughter asked gently.

“I do, dear. This must be your play season. I’ve got plenty to do
single-handed. I’ll miss your help, of course——” he hurried to
interject, “but you must promise me, right this minute, to fall in
line with the girls and boys——”

“And fall out of line—with you!” Barbara’s arms went quickly about his
neck and so the promise was given.

“And this is splendid, this affair today,” her father continued, when
he recovered his composure. “I only wish you had a lot of pretty
things——”

“I have, slathers of them,” she fibbed bravely. But no mention was
made of Cara’s offer of the extra party dress.

Nor did she bother to tell her dad that Glenn Gaynor was expected to
be at the party. Glenn was the attractive youth who figured so
prominently in Barbara’s appearance on the beach, when Cara and her
girl friends stood at a safe distance, thrilled in admiration.

One hour more—and then she must be at Billows.




                              CHAPTER IV

                              ON HER WAY


“Just for a lark,” Barbara told herself, “I’ll take the old cap and
gown. We are sure to dress up after we undress, and I really haven’t a
decent robe.”

A robe! If she only could have known how this particular item had
bothered the other girls, especially Ruth Harrison. The cap and gown
which Barbara had decided to take, “just for a lark,” were sent her
last winter by Marjorie Ellis who achieved them in a brief stay at
college and wanted to forget she had ever heard the word. Marjorie
hated college now, she had been so homesick while away in Connecticut,
that she absolutely refused to return at mid-years, and because she
knew Barbara would love even to play at being a collegian, Marjorie
sent her the mortar-board hat and the big black cape, they poetically
call a gown.

Often had Barbara dressed up in the college clothes, especially at
night when she would parade around in the enfolding comfort of that
soft, black robe. It was this habit, no doubt, that gave her the idea
of fetching the costume to Cara’s party. This and the necessity of
having something to throw on over her pajamas—how lucky that she had
the pajamas!

Packed at last and her misgivings quieted, Barbara ventured a look at
herself in the old-fashioned mirror that hung between her room and the
sitting-room.

“I guess I’ll do,” she told the reflection. It showed a tall, finely
formed girl, with a head held high—Barbara’s head couldn’t get enough
of sky gazing—and wearing a sport suit that Dora, the maid of all
work, had helped her make.

“Good material and not a bad fit,” the girl secretly commented, for
the natty little jacket was made of bright green flannel, and the
skirt of white flannel had a matching stripe of green. Her blouse was
white, bought ready made, and a little white felt hat had been picked
up at Asbury Park; not picked up on the beach, however, but at a
bargain counter very late last fall. So that the costume was quite
complete and decidedly effective.

Of course Barbara’s hair was bobbed, and because of a little ripple
that huddled around her ears the bronzed, glossy tresses framed her
face in a most attractive way. Barbara seemed dark and her blue eyes
were often taken for brown. Her brown hair might be called brunette,
if one didn’t see the bronze tones that came in certain lights.

And she wore her clothes well. That was why her own amateur efforts,
supplemented by the not unwilling but always protesting Dora, usually
turned out well. So she had no fear for the effect of her sport dress
upon her arrival at Cara’s party; it was the robe and the party dress
and other accessories that bothered her somewhat.

“Cara’s car is coming out this way, Dads,” she told her father as she
picked up her bag, “so they’re going to stop for me.”

“That’s fine,” her father replied. “Cara’s a nice girl——”

“There’s a knock; I’ll answer,” Barbara interrupted, hurrying to the
side door. “Oh, it’s Nicky and his sister Vicky,” she presently
explained, for she could see the two Italian children through the
glass door; Nickolas and Victoria.

“Don’t bother with them,” her father ordered irritably. “I wish those
children would stop coming around here.”

“They’ve got some eggs to sell——”

“We don’t need any eggs——”

“Oh, Dads, the poor youngsters have only three eggs to sell and we’ve
got to buy them from them,” insisted Barbara, opening her purse with
its precious party money in it to give Nicky twenty cents in return
for three eggs “just laid.”

“And how’s granny?” Barbara asked the black-eyed children.

“Fine,” said Nicky.

“She ain’t either, she’s sick,” declared Vicky.

“Well, run along,” ordered the smiling Barbara, “I’m going out——”

“Say,” Nicky squeezed in, “do you want an ole candlestick? I’ve got
one fer half a dollar.”

“No, I guess not.” Barbara was becoming impatient. “Run along; here’s
my car,” for the toot from Cara’s car was sounding along the drive.

“It’s a swell candlestick,” Nicky argued. “I could get a dollar fer it
in Asbury.”

“Better go in there and sell it then,” almost thundered Dr. Hale, if
ever he did speak in a thunderous tone, which he didn’t, quite, “and
don’t fetch any more eggs here——”

“Dads!” pleaded Barbara. “Let them come. Poor little things——”

But Nicky and Vicky were off, scampering as if Dr. Hale had threatened
them with a shot-gun.

“Good-bye, Dads,” called back Barbara. “Be sure to phone me——”

“I shall—not,” replied her father, sending the first two words after
Barbara, and blowing the last one against the hall mantel. He would
not phone Barbara, not unless there was very urgent need to do so, and
there appeared to be no prospect of the latter contingency, just then.

Dora came forth from the pantry, two eggs in one hand and one in the
other. Her long face was longer than usual, and her faded eyes seemed
about to lose their jell and melt into a little puddle of colorless
mucilage.

“There’s the eggs,” she intoned, as if any one could have mistaken
them for tomatoes.

“Yes,” echoed Dr. Hale, “I see. But I wish those youngsters would
peddle eggs some place else. They’re a nuisance.”

“Sure are,” agreed Dora, “and I don’t think Barbara ought to have them
trap’sin’ around here at all.”

Dr. Hale eyed Dora sharply. It was surprising how much audacity a few
months’ overdue wages could incite. But he had no idea of telling this
to Dora.

“Yes, sir,” she went on, putting one of the twin eggs in the hand with
the singleton, “they’re a thieving gang, them Eytalians.”

“But those children aren’t thieves, Dora,” the doctor found courage to
say, “and their folks are poor but deserving, I understand.”

“You understand _that_ from Barbara,” Dora retorted adding “sir” when
she realized how impertinent the answer really was. “She’s too good
hearted. I’ve told her time and again, and there was a report that
them Eytalians put a bomb in the hotel——”

“Tut—tut!” checked up the doctor, smiling in a way, but not in a
cheerful way. “That old hotel burned itself down when it swallowed a
big spark from the trains it must have been very weary listening to.
The old Mansion House wasn’t bombed by any one, Italian nor others. It
just got tired standing there useless and deserted. It was once a
merry place, Dora. Many a happy time I had at the Mansion House—before
I got to studying bugs, you know,” he explained, moving off towards
his study.

Dora too moved off, she towards the kitchen.

“Well,” she called as she went, “what I’m saying is that Barbara is
too fond of trashy folks. And now that she’s going out in society she
ought to know better!”

If Barbara could only have heard that.

“Going out in society!”

And her reputation endangered by taking up with trashy folks,
especially Nicky and Vicky who sold junk candlesticks and new-laid
eggs!

In his study Dr. Hale did not at once turn to the unfinished
experiment that lay in the tubes before him. He was thinking that Dora
was right, in spite of her brusque way of stating the case. There had
been very unpleasant rumors current all over Sea Cosset upon more than
one occasion, when suspicious fires brought out the volunteer fireman
and when daring thefts called for action from the limited police
force.

The “Eytalians”, as Dora and others called all the foreigners who were
huddled in a few old barracks over by the tracks, were not only
suspected but openly blamed, and the Marcusi family, to which Nickolas
and Victoria belonged, were doubly charged with the crimes, because
their father was known to be in prison. He had belonged to a gang, it
was said, and he couldn’t get away because he was almost a cripple.
For years he had tended the railroad gates, and one day he dashed
under the gates to let a horse out before the train hit him. That was
what happened to Nick’s father’s leg.

But at his shanty alongside the track some men plotted one night, and
whether he was to blame or not, when the midnight train jumped the
track because it couldn’t escape the ties that had been piled up to
derail it, Nickolas Marcusi was found guilty of aiding the plotters.
He had protested his innocence, of course, but to have the railroad’s
property damaged and many lives endangered by a plot actually planned
on the railroad itself, seemed too daring to countenance. So Nick
Marcusi went to prison and was still there when little Nick and his
smaller sister sold Barbara Hale three fresh eggs for her father’s
dinner.

Dr. Hale was pondering all of this now. He had been sorry for the
one-legged gateman; had even tried to intervene for him at court, but
people about the sea-coast town were bitter. They despised foreigners,
although none of their own class would have tended a railroad gate and
risked a life to save a fractious horse.

It was this daring deed that had so enthused Barbara, and she was
determined never to turn from her door little Nicky and Vicky—not for
Dora nor for a dozen like her! She would buy every egg they brought;
she couldn’t often buy the junk the children uncovered at the dump,
but she had given them fifty cents once for an old pewter mug.

“Heigh-o!” sighed Dr. Hale, turning finally to his test tubes. “It’s a
hard road for the poor to travel, but harder still for the more
unfortunate.”

He was seeing little Victoria’s face “all eyes” as he spoke harshly
about the eggs. He was remembering little Nicky’s flying feet as the
children scurried off, and he was not blaming Barbara for her interest
in the picturesque youngsters.

“There’s something fascinating about the genuine,” the doctor pursued
secretly, “and even a genuine ragamuffin has charm.”

The clock in the lower hall chimed four. Barbara would be at the party
now, and he was so glad she had gone. Twice Dora had called up the
back stairs to ask if he wanted dinner earlier as Barbara would not be
home, once she had asked if he would like the eggs “cuddled”, she
meant coddled, of course, and he said he would. And he even conceded a
half-hour in favor of Dora’s earlier meal so that she could go to the
beach to see the fish boats come in.

Also, there had been two telephone calls to jerk him out of his
reverie, and already he was missing Barbara.

And now the door-bell!

“Might as well put work aside for today!” the doctor told himself, for
while Dora was preparing a meal she never deigned to answer the door.

“Hey there!” came a shout through the hall. “May I come up?”

“Yes, come along. Glad you are nobody else,” called back Doctor Hale,
while Glenn Gaynor was already dashing up the stairs.

“Barbara gone?” he asked sharply, as if hoping she wasn’t and knowing
she was.

“Yes, went long ago,” answered the doctor. “You’re going to the dance,
I hear.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” The boy, who was so big and good-looking that he
might well have been called a young man, tossed his cap down
impatiently, and folded his brown arms to keep them out of mischief.
“I hate these affairs——”

“Now, see here, Glenn,” said the doctor, in that unmistakable voice
that starts a lecture, “all work and no play, you know——”

“Yes sir, I know,” Glenn cut in. “But when a fellow starts they run
him to death, and I just can’t see these house parties.”

“Why go then?” complacently asked the older man.

“Promised Babs, promised Dud and promised his sister, Cara,” admitted
the complaining youth. “A silly little party, with giggling girls just
out of grammar school——”

“Oh, really now, Glenn,” laughed Dr. Hale, “they’re better than that.
They are, I believe high school sophs. And besides—look who is giving
this party!”

“Oh, yes _I_ know,” Glenn almost sneered, “the rich de Burkes,” this
was a pure mockery, “at Billows, seaside residence of—oh, darn!” he
broke off suddenly. “I came over to buy Babs off. I’ve got tickets for
the Music Festival tomorrow night and—I’m due at a—dance!”

Glenn’s discomfiture was so boyish it was positively laughable, and
Dr. Hale was enjoying it.

“Look out, boy,” he warned. “That’s just the way a colt acts when he
sees a lasso!”

“Lasso! What do you mean, sir?”

“That you may have a better time at the dance than you anticipate,”
replied Dr. Hale slowly but not solemnly.




                              CHAPTER V

                        BILLOWS THE BEAUTIFUL


Imagine trees, so many beautiful trees that they made canopies,
tunnels and softest green shelters fit for fairies, for elves and for
lovely little children. Outside and beyond this grove, imagine a
carpet so green that the sky threw shadows upon it in futile jealousy,
gardens so gorgeous that butterflies fluttered over the blooms,
bewildered and confused in their temptations and then—just beyond and
yet within all of this, think of a House Beautiful!

That was Billows, the summer home of Cara Burke.

A great iron fence raised its palings outside the farthermost borders
of the estate. But only the ocean and the ocean drive were thus
separated, for acres and acres were shut in behind the iron fence, and
one couldn’t find the gates unless one knew where to look for them.
Greenery everywhere.

Yes, they were very rich, the Burkes, but no one could call them
“stuck up,” not even the most jealous, or most narrow-minded person at
Sea Cosset, who was generally supposed to be old Sarah Jenkins, who
sold peppermints and never stopped talking.

And here at the Billows, Cara Burke was holding her first house party,
while among those present was Barbara Hale.

“Cara, you should be dressed and down here now,” her mother warned
from the alcove near the stairs. “The girls are coming——”

“You do the honors, Moma,” called back Cara, in a voice quite
pardonable if she was a little distance off. “That’s just Louise and
Esther——”

No pompous butler barred the way, for the massive doors were open wide
and the laughter of young girls was echoing clear up to Cara’s
dressing-room, while Sniffy, the black poodle, bumped himself down the
stairs to find out what it was all about.

“Come right along, girls,” Mrs. Burke welcomed the first arrivals,
Esther, Louise, and Lida. “Cara will be down directly.”

The girls hesitated, overwhelmed by the beauty of the flowers and soft
lights. They were already familiar with the house and its luxurious
furnishings, but the urns and vases filled with blooms beneath the
silken floor lamps made the rooms look like a scene from some gorgeous
theatrical set.

“I waited for Ruth,” Esther was saying, “but she didn’t come over.
Then we drove over there and she was gone, in a taxi, her mother
said.”

“Here she is now!” proclaimed Louise, for the rollicking Ruth was
tripping up the stone steps, suit-case dangling by her.

“’Low girls!” she called out. “I missed you! But I got the worth of my
money from old Taxi-Dermot,” she declared, “I made him drive me down
along the ocean, and then—so that every one might see me, I directed
him to drive past the tennis court——”

“Here’s Cara,” interrupted Louise. “Ruth, you didn’t shake hands with
Mrs. Burke,” she whispered to the obstreperous Ruth, although Mrs.
Burke had by now disappeared, leaving the scene to Cara and Sniffy.

Greetings and exclamations peculiar to girls who are only growing up
and think they have already grown up, were being perfunctorily
exchanged, when Cara’s car, almost noiselessly, rolled up the drive,
and then a shadow appeared in the doorway. This time it was the
Burke’s chauffeur, Dixon, and the suit-case he primly placed in the
hall, over near the carved wooden settee, was none other than Barbara
Hale’s.

“Oh, here’s Barbara!” exclaimed Cara, happily, rushing forward to
greet the latest and last arrival, Barbara, in her green and white
sport suit with the close-fitting white felt hat.

Cara gushed and gurgled, saying every pleasant thing she could think
of and all but kissing Barbara, but it seemed as if all the joy was
between those two. The other girls had fallen back a little, into a
group of their own, and just then Barbara wondered if she were going
to be treated as an interloper, an outsider.

Were they not glad to meet her?

“Girls!” called out Cara, “you all know Barbara, don’t you? We met her
at the committee meeting, you know,” she pointed out breathlessly.
“Barbara, this is Louise, and Lida, and you must know Ruth? Ruth
Harrison——”

“Oh yes, I know Ruth,” interrupted the embarrassed Barbara, for she
was feeling the same old catch in her breath which she always
experienced when meeting a lot of strange girls.

But presently the ice was broken and the waters of sociability oozed
along, if a little halting, when Esther blocked their way with her
little snowball about Barbara being “a stranger in Sea Cosset, if she
did live only just across the line.”

Of course Esther had to say that. “Just across the line”, as if a few
scrub pines and a couple of wild fields could really make any
difference in climate or territory. But one place was ordinary,
Landing, the other exclusive, Sea Cosset.

Were they going to snub her? Cara’s profuse welcome seemed to Barbara
a little strained, as if Cara were trying to cover up something. Only
Ruth Harrison attempted to put Barbara at her ease and she undertook
to criticize clothes.

“Now, that’s what I call a nifty little costume,” spoke out Ruth
without an attempt at politeness. “Wherever did you get a rig like
that, Barbara?”

Wherever did she get it? Barbara winced a little, then burst out
laughing.

“No use trying to put on airs,” she declared gaily. “This is home-made
and the cook helped me out.”

After that they all “joined in the chorus.” Every one told about where
her clothes were bought, (if not actually quoting the prices) and
there was more joy over a bargain—it was Ruth’s sport stockings
two-ninety-eight, regular four dollars—than over the wonderful lace
tracery on the side of Louise’s really lovely tub-silk dress.

Clothes! And Barbara would barely trust herself to utter the tricky
little word!

“But are we all here?” Cara presently asked, for they were still
hanging around the door, as if the arrival had not been completed.

Ruth counted six and that was all expected.

“Then let’s get the bags put away and go outside,” proposed Cara.
“Since you haven’t been travelling——”

“But we have!” joked Ruth. “Didn’t I make the Taxi-Dermot drive me all
over the world in his rattle-box?”

“Then perhaps _you_ want to change,” suggested Cara in the same joking
manner. “You must be worn out, Ruthie dear,” she mocked. “I’ll have my
maid help you into a warm baa-th——”

“You will not! I’ve been in the ocean and if I don’t walk straight
I’ll spoil something, for my ears are leaking the briny,” chuckled
Ruth, merrily.

Barbara was merely looking on and listening. She felt out of place,
even awkward, but she knew how to affect poise even if she didn’t feel
it. Yes, she had needed the companionship of girls; there was no
denying that, she was secretly willing to admit.

Up the stairs they raced, suit-cases banging along with them, while
Sniffy, the poodle, turned up his little black nose and went the other
way. The Burkes might not have been of the class picturesquely called
“high-hat” which is the newer word for high-toned, but Sniffy was
worse than that. He was snobby. _He_ hadn’t any use for giggling girls
and he gruntily resented their invasion of the beautiful Billows.

“I was going to have a drawing for room-mates,” Cara told the girls
who were now all gathered in her gold and green room. “But honestly,
girls, I just——”

“Oh, we know you want Barbara——”

“Babs,” corrected Cara. “We’re going to call you Babs, aren’t we?” she
asked the girl who was lost in admiration of a marine scene that hung
between the two latticed windows.

“Let’s get out while it’s so lovely——” suggested Esther, and in that
little suggestion one might have noticed that Esther was adroitly
managing to divert attention from Babs. For which Babs was thankful,
although Esther could not possibly have known that.

Suit-cases unpacked and room-mates assigned, presently they were
racing off to the tennis court although apparently no one was going to
play.

“Too hot,” was the verdict on that suggestion, but it was more likely
too much trouble; and besides, Esther and Louise at least were not
dressed for tennis.

It was all very unreal to Barbara. These beautiful grounds, the gaily
dressed girls, so care-free, so frivolous and more than anything else,
so girlish. It must be fine to feel free from anxiety. There were
Dora’s wages due, and Dr. Hale’s bills not coming in promptly, there
were the cultures for experiments to be paid for and they were so
expensive. And now, if her father was determined to shut her help out,
that would mean also the loss of Glenn Gaynor’s assistance, for he
worked with Barbara, enjoying the experiments and calling them fun
when they worked them out together. He would hardly enjoy Dr. Hale’s
professional methods; what boy, working alone, would?

Words are halting and inadequate to express the mental flashes that
pictured all this in Barbara’s mind, for it came as clearly and as
quickly as the penetrating gleams of the late afternoon sunshine, as
they shot through indifferent clouds. Not even the insistence of the
girls’ laughter nor Cara’s challenge to knocking up balls, could
disguise the reality of the worries she had tried and failed to leave
behind her at home.

And clothes! Clothes! How they mocked her now! She who could sally
forth triumphantly in a skirt, unhemmed (frayed out for effect!); in a
sweater that Dora made for the church fair and it didn’t sell, in a
hat—no, without a hat. Around home and in her unhampered outdoor life
all of this and even worse was all right, rather individual and by no
means a hardship. But now, here with these daintily dressed girls, of
whom even the careless Ruth Harrison admitted paying two dollars and a
half for sport stockings, here Barbara fully realized her shabbiness.

They were seated on the low, white Roman benches, and Cara, who was
wearing a simple but lovely white flannel, had just jumped up to bat a
few balls over or under the net. Glad of a chance to relieve her
misgivings with some positive action, Barbara quickly followed, and
these two girls were again apart from the others, rather
unintentionally.

“I told you,” remarked Esther to Louise.

“What?” demanded Louise.

“What? Why that,” pointing to the flying figures at the tennis net.

“Well, what of it? Cara asked _us_ to play, didn’t she?” Louise was
not going to let a small thing like Cara’s open preference for Barbara
spoil her good time.

“Isn’t she wonderfully athletic?” pointed out Lida. She meant Barbara
and she meant the remark to be a compliment.

“Oh, yes.” Esther’s eyebrows went up quizzically.

“Whew!” whistled Ruth Harrison. “Look at that jump! And _we_ sit here
like bumps on logs. Say girls, if we’re not going to ‘bust’ our new
clothes doing that, we had better find something else to do. As a
grandstand this bench isn’t big enough,” and she tried to push Louise
off at the other end.

It was presently agreed that the non-players should go down to the
lake. The lake was accessible from one end of the grounds, and when
Ruth called out the glad news to Cara, she, Cara, insisted upon going
too.

That her other guests were missing her while she batted balls with
Barbara, Cara easily guessed, but as they planned a boat ride Barbara
hesitated.

“I just love this exercise and really need it,” she demurred. “Let me
play around here and you go along for your sail,” she entreated Cara.

“And leave you all alone?” sang out little Lida.

“All by my loney,” laughed Barbara. “Don’t worry about me, I’m all
right,” and she continued to bat balls against the high wire net that
served to keep them within bounds.

[Illustration: “OH!” GASPED BARBARA. “IT’S NICKY! AND HE’S HURT!”]

Cara hesitated. “I am determined to let every girl do just as she
pleases,” she remarked. “But I hate to leave you alone, Babs.”

“Please do,” begged Barbara. “I’m having a wonderful time,” and she
sprang for a ball that tried to escape her racket, while Ruth again
shouted merrily in applause.

Cara, Lida, Ruth, Louise and Esther, comprising the entire house party
with Barbara excepted, started off along the winding path to the lake.
Unconsciously Barbara sighed. It was good to be left alone.




                              CHAPTER VI

                             THE ACCIDENT


She should not have come. Somehow she didn’t seem to belong. For a
single second Barbara considered flight. A glance towards the freedom
of the road made the girl feel like a prisoner within those fairy-like
grounds.

Then: “How silly!” her better judgment prompted, “when you know Cara
wants you and the other girls—well, who could blame them for thinking
one different when one felt different, acted differently, and was
different?”

“Dad and Dora are just about now talking of the fun I’m having,” she
reflected, as a cynical little titter rippled over her lips. But
presently the racket again swung into action, and from the lake beyond
the grove floated back gales of laughter. Those girls knew how to have
a good time. _They_ knew how to play.

“Born that way, I suppose,” Barbara continued to reason, “while I was
born with a genius for a father and an angel for a mother. No wonder
I’m different,” she decided, her sense of humor at least being all of
its kind that any girl could wish for.

That so-called saving, sense of humor! Well, if it didn’t actually
save one it helped a lot. Barbara Hale was perfectly willing to admit
that fact at this very moment.

Bing! Biff! Bat! How the balls flew! And how her muscular young arm
served that delicately strung racket, as finely adjusted as a precious
violin and probably as well beloved by its proud possessor.

But the racket didn’t belong to Barbara. Cara had snatched it up from
a bench and handed it to her when they entered the court. Now, Barbara
paused to note the burnt-in letters the racket was marked with; Dudley
Burke. Yes, it belonged to Cara’s brother, Dud, and he had a local
reputation as a crack tennis player. Naturally interested in sports,
she was also interested in its advocates, and as if her thoughts had
gone by wireless, at this instant a boy’s whistle sounded through the
shrubbery.

Barbara started guiltily. Why? All alone in the strange grounds, a
stranger—what would the girls say if they should come along? Perhaps
that she had stayed behind them just for this chance. But she had not,
of course. The wish to be alone had prompted her, only that. But now,
here was Dudley Burke. She knew it before she saw him, and being
essentially honest she admitted, secretly, that she was glad he had
come!

“Hello!” came a cheery greeting from between the mulberry trees.
“Where’s Cara?”

“Gone to the lake,” Barbara replied easily, for the boy was not
exactly a stranger to her. She had met him with Glenn at the hotel
tennis match.

“Practicing?”

“With your racket——”

“Oh, help yourself. Plenty of them spoiling around here. Feel like a
little game?”

Barbara’s face was being transformed from that brooding serious
picture of a few moments ago, to the image of a pretty girl, blushing
happily and responding naturally to the comradeship offered her.

What if she did prefer boys to girls? Or if she thought she did?
Wasn’t Glenn the best playmate a girl ever had? So generously
understanding and so free from petty criticism, was Glenn.

“I’m afraid I shouldn’t be on the court in these shoes,” she answered
Dudley, while she thought of so many other things. “They have heels——”

“Never mind the heels,” he interrupted. “This will be rolled tomorrow,
besides those are little heels,” he finished, not knowing that the
better word might have been “low” for heels.

Dudley was like Cara, good-looking in a very general way and with that
same easy gracefulness that made Cara so attractive. But his hair!
Red! The very reddest-red, bleached a little now by the summer sun,
but red for all that. He should have had blue eyes, but Barbara wasn’t
wondering about the color of his eyes—although Cara always called them
green—she wasn’t wondering about anything, as a matter of fact, she
was just deciding.

Queer, how easy it was for her to fall into comradeship with a boy.
Dudley Burke wasn’t guessing at the price of her shoes, or her
stockings or wondering where she got “that rig.” But he was curious to
know how she sprinted like any fellow would, and how she put up such a
good game of tennis, anyway.

Tennis surely is the game for boys and girls, and these two were
throwing so much energy and enthusiasm into it they could not help
getting proportionate enjoyment from it. Time passed quickly, too
quickly for both of them. Then, suddenly Barbara remembered she had
promised to follow the girls to the lake.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to stop,” she said reluctantly, panting a
little. “This is lots of fun, but I promised to meet the girls——”

“Oh, yes,” drawled the boy, shaking his head in mockery. “This here
house party, of course——” He did a few tricks with his racket then
sprang around to get Barbara’s jacket which she had left on the bench.

“Oh, let me show you something,” he exclaimed, as he reached for his
own coat. “Mother’s ‘nuts’ on old junk, and look what I just bought!”
He was holding up an old candlestick.

“Why,” faltered Barbara, “isn’t that—wherever did you get that?” she
asked quickly altering the original form of her question.

“Couple of kids. It’s brass.” He was rubbing the tarnished metal with
his handkerchief. “Two funny little Dagoes waylaid me down the road.
Suppose they snibbied it——”

“Nicky and Vicky wouldn’t steal anything.”

“Nicky and Vicky! Do you know the youngsters?”

“They sell fresh eggs,” Barbara hastily explained, instantly
regretting her thoughtless defense of the two little Italians. But for
some reason, which she could not have named, she felt that the
children needed defending.

Dudley was toying with the queer old candlestick.

“Well, this isn’t so bad, and Mother has what Sis calls a junk
complex. Funny how those kids pick up things.”

“They really search in the dumps, you know,” Barbara interrupted. She
was just seeing Nicky and Vicky searching in the dump and how they
must have rejoiced when they had discovered the candlestick.

“Yes.” Dudley hesitated, then added: “I gave them a whole ‘buck’ for
this, but they only asked a half-dollar. They looked as if they needed
a lot more.” He tossed his head to one side boyishly as he said that.

“They do.” Barbara replied quickly. “Their father is—in prison, you
know. He used to be gate-keeper at the tracks over at Stonybend, and
he got in some trouble, which lots of people think he had nothing to
do with. Dad says it’s an outrage for the state to take a man from his
family and leave a poor woman to support them.” Her voice was seething
with indignation, as any reference to that story always made her
angry.

“So it is. The poor kids! No wonder they have to dig in the dumps. I
wish I’d given them more money——”

A sudden shrill of voices checked Dudley’s remarks. Along the winding
path a flutter of light dresses broke through the greenery. There
seemed to be some excitement.

“Here come the girls and—what’s the matter?” Barbara exclaimed, for
the girls were coming back and some one with them was crying!

“Some youngster——” Dudley barely said before he was hurrying to meet
Cara and her companions.

“Oh!” gasped Barbara. “It’s Nicky! And he’s hurt!”

Between Cara and Ruth, Nicky was being led along, splotches of ugly
red staining a bandage that had been wound around the little fellow’s
wrist. He was not crying, but his sister Vicky was. She was in the
charge of Louise and Esther, who vainly tried to assure the frightened
child that her brother would be all right, and that she shouldn’t cry
so.

“What happened?” Dudley asked as quickly as his question could be
heard, for every one seemed to be talking at once.

“He fell into the lake and cut his arm on some glass,” Cara replied.
“I’m glad you’re here, Dud——”

“Oh, it ain’t nauthin’” protested the boy bravely. “I often get cut——”

“But not like this,” Cara insisted. “He had better have it dressed. We
were just coming in when we saw him——”

“I’d be home now——”

“A good thing you didn’t go home, Nicky,” Barbara told him
authoritatively. “You might scare your granny to death with all that
blood.”

“Oh, she isn’t scary.” The boy was wincing with pain, and the pallor
of suffering made his dark eyes look strangely old and unreal in his
small sharp face.

Dudley sort of brushed the girls aside and now had his arm around
Nicky.

“We’ll see a doctor, kid,” he said kindly. “Then there’ll be no
come-back——”

“I don’t want no doctor,” the boy exclaimed excitedly.

“He won’t hurt you,” assured Dudley trying to inspire courage.

“’T’aint the hurt. I’m not afraid, but——”

Barbara guessed why the boy feared any one who might seem to be an
official; even a doctor had some authority, and she quickly understood
Nicky’s fear. His father had been taken away by officials, and he had
not been allowed to come back. How could the child be expected to
forget that dreadful scene that had left them worse off than if they
had been orphans?

“I’ll tell you,” Barbara exclaimed, “we’ll go see my dad. You know
him, Nicky, and he’s a good doctor——”

“But Dr. Landes is just at the corner,” Louise tried to suggest. “Why
not go to him?”

“It won’t take but a few minutes to run over to Dr. Hale’s,” Dudley
decided. “And my car is in the drive. What about Little Sister?” He
referred to Vicky who by now had ceased her wailing.

“I’m going to give Little Sister some ice-cream,” Cara announced
brightly. “Won’t that be nice?”

Vicky seemed to think it would be, so she allowed herself to be led
towards the house, while Dudley and Barbara took the wounded boy to
the auto.

“Sure I’m not goin’ to no strange doctor?” the child questioned before
he would set foot into the pretty little sport car with the “rumble
seat” in the back. Barbara was to occupy that place, while Dudley and
Nickolas rode in front.

“We’re going to my house,” Barbara answered him frankly. “You don’t
think I’d fool you?”

“No; I guess not, you wouldn’t. But this don’t hurt much. Who’s going
to brung Vicky home?”

“She’ll get a car ride too,” replied Dudley, supposing that would be
cheering news.

“But no strangers don’t dast fetch her home!” cried the boy quivering
with excitement.

“Why?” asked Dudley.

“Can’t no strangers go to our house,” the boy protested. His
excitement was alarming, for the bandage around his hand was now
dripping blood.

“Oh, look!” cried Barbara, “how your hand bleeds! You must keep quiet.
Here, take this——”

“Wait a minute: I have some cheesecloth in the back of the car,” said
Dudley, pulling into the curb so that he might stop the car. When he
stepped out to get the cheesecloth from under the rumble seat, he
whispered to Barbara:

“Seems to have something to hide at his house.”

“Oh, that’s because of the trouble—his father you know,” she also
whispered. The cheesecloth had already been cut in convenient duster
sizes so that it was no trouble to wind a few of the spotless pieces
around Nicky’s wounded hand.

Settled once more, upon Barbara’s assurance that they would go
straight back to Billows and get Vicky just as soon as the cut was
dressed, again Dudley turned his car towards the homestead and office
of Dr. Hale.




                             CHAPTER VII

                           NICKY AND VICKY


Nicky wasn’t a bit afraid of Dr. Hale. He scarcely flinched as the
deep cut was washed and dressed, Barbara acting as nurse and Dora
acting foolishly.

She couldn’t see why Barbara had to bother with those “young uns,” and
she didn’t see, anyhow, why Barbara had to leave the party “on account
of a boy’s cut hand.”

Because Dudley was present, although he was too well-bred to show his
amusement, for Dora did “take on” as no maid would be expected to do,
out of her place and all that, yet Barbara could not safely ask her to
desist. Such rashness, Barbara feared, might precipitate something
worse, as Dora was always “free with her tongue.”

Quiet and dignified, Dr. Hale took care of his little patient and what
Dora lacked in giving the home the stamp of order, surely he,
personally, supplied with his courtliness.

Dudley was keenly interested in the laboratory equipment, as Barbara
told him to look things over while he waited, and he expressed the
wish of coming in with Glenn some day, to see how things worked.

Finally the wound was all fixed up, and Dr. Hale asked Nicky how it
felt.

“Fine,” he replied, smiling now in evident relief.

“How did you do it?” Barbara asked.

“Duckin’,” replied Nicky.

“What for?” Dudley wanted to know.

“Fer the half-dollar you gim-me.”

“Oh, you lost your candlestick money?” Barbara exclaimed.

“Yes; Vicky wanted to see the picture on it and she dropped it in. I
got to be goin’.” Nicky was again getting anxious about the little
sister.

“Yes, we’re going,” Dudley told him, meanwhile saying good-bye to Dr.
Hale. But Barbara had suddenly disappeared.

She had dashed up to her own room, and was standing with her back to
the door, as if that would shut out everything else.

“I don’t want to go back,” she sighed. “I hate girls’ parties and——”
She never gave in to such emotion, she wouldn’t cry about anything so
unimportant and yet—her eyes were brimming!

“Clothes, clothes!” she fairly bit at the words. “All girls care for
is clothes.” And this was a frank confession that she too cared a lot
about clothes, else why was she being so upset over them?

“And they’ll probably say I just wanted to run off this way in
Dudley’s car.” Another unpleasant thought, but there might have been a
good reason behind it, for Louise and Esther had both called after
her. They had been joking of course, and while their words were
something about not “running away or going on too long a ride,” it
would have been stupid not to understand just what they meant. They
were teasing her about playing tennis, first, and going car riding,
second, with Dudley.

“I’ll just show them how much I care about their old party,” Barbara
pouted, sliding down into her comfortable arm chair. “Poverty suits
me—when it’s my own.”

Her eyes reluctantly swept the room with its uncompromising
shabbiness. Perhaps within her eyes the picture of those other rooms,
Cara’s, refused to be obliterated; at any rate, her things had never
before looked so ugly, so old, so faded, and so—so hateful. They
almost made her shiver. That dresser with brass handles, when they
might easily have been changed for glass. And a mantelpiece! As if a
mantel were of any possible beauty or use!

“Barbara! Babs!”

Her father calling. “Dear Dads!” This was not a sigh of self-pity. “It
isn’t his fault. I wonder why brains, real brains are sold so cheap?
Yes, Dad,” she answered, patting her face with the powder puff, “I’m
coming.” She was on her feet again and going back to the party. Of
course she would _have_ to go. Nicky’s accident had seemed like a
temporary release, but she must go back to Cara’s.

Nicky!

Why was he fearful of Dudley Burke or any stranger going to his place?
Yes, he must have something to hide.

“And I’ll just see that he hides it,” Barbara determined bitterly, as
if Nicky’s troubles were so like her own, and as if he too had a right
to protect himself from strangers’ interference.

But what was he hiding? She wondered, as she tried to cover up the
signs of her rebellion, tried to recapture the expression of happiness
which she had shed when she slammed the door of her room.

Well, she would go, but she was going to hate everything. Cara was
lovely and not really a “goody-goody,” patronizing kind of girl. She
did like Cara. And her brother too, was splendid. He could play
tennis; perhaps they would have a game after dinner.

But the other girls probably wouldn’t want to play. And she, Barbara,
must not ignore all the conventions.

“I’ll be down in one moment!” she called again.

Nicky was already out in the car. What a little fighter he was! How
the children of the poor do learn to fight for their own! He was bound
to go for little Vicky and to bring her home himself. No auto ride
would lure him from what he believed was his duty; not Nicky.

Another little squeezing hug for her father and a call to Dora and
Barbara sprang into the rumble seat of Dudley’s car.

“We’re going for little sister,” he told her, tossing his red head to
one side in that characteristic gesture with which she was already
familiar. “Guess she’ll have her ice-cream finished now. But Nicky
must have some too.”

“I couldn’t wait. I gotta hurry up. Never mind the ice-cream,” bravely
renounced the boy.

“We’ll put it in a—a pail,” declared Dudley laughingly. “You’ve got to
have some ice-cream after all your trouble, boy. We’ll see to that.”

“’T’aint no trouble. Don’t hurt hardly a bit,” he protested again, as
if ashamed of the trouble he was making for others.

“And I’ll bet you didn’t get the half-dollar?” Dudley pressed further.

“Nope, I didn’t.”

“Then we must fix that up, too. You ought to hear the stories of
deep-sea diving about some boys in other countries.” Dudley was trying
to be entertaining. “They just throw money in the water, folks do, to
see the fellows dive after it.”

“I know,” answered Nicky.

“Perhaps you’ve seen pictures of it in magazines,” ventured Barbara.

“Yeah, I did. My father used to get lots of magazines from the train
men.”

There was silence for a time after that. Likely both Barbara and
Dudley were blaming the state for having cut off even that opportunity
for poor little Nicky. It hadn’t been much; just cast-off magazines,
but they must have been educating, and they must have given real
pleasure to the Italian gate-keeper’s family. But now he was in
prison, just because he had been in company with bad men. But the
public must be protected, although Barbara was not reasonable enough,
just then, to think of that.

“We don’t have to ride home,” mumbled Nicky, as Dudley turned his car
in under the towering trees that arched the roadway to Billows. “We
can walk just as well.”

“But why not ride?” demanded Dudley. “That’s what this little bus is
for.”

“I’ll tell you,” chimed in Barbara. “We’ll drive you as far as the
tracks and you can walk home from there. Then, if your grandmother
sees you coming she won’t be frightened as she might be if she saw you
coming in a car.”

“Ye-ah, that’s right, that’ll be fine,” brightened Nicky, shifting
around in the seat and plainly showing by his general brightness of
manner what a relief that suggestion had brought him. “Ye-ah, that’ll
be fine,” he repeated more than once, kicking the car with his very
dirty bare feet, his joy seeming to affect his very toes.

“All right,” assented Dudley, “you’re boss. We’ll dump you anywhere
you say. And oh, wait,” he slipped his hand into his pocket, “here’s a
dollar to make up for your ducking and your cutting. And if you find
any more fancy junk let me know.”

Nicky’s good luck seemed to be increasing, and he smiled broadly as he
used his left hand to tuck the dollar bill into some sort of pocket.
Queer, Barbara thought, how little boys can depend upon pockets in
such tattered clothing, but somehow the pockets always did prove
reliable. Who ever heard of a real _boy_ losing money?

They found little sister ready to relinquish her hold on the ice-cream
spoon, and to open her other hand to allow the cake crumbs to trickle
through her brown fingers upon the plate Cara had set before her.

All the girls were gathered around the child, for Cara and Ruth had
managed to get her talking and she had furnished them with quite an
entertainment. They asked her all sorts of foolish questions, and even
the cynical Esther did find cause for a good laugh when Victoria, aged
four and a half years, tried to tell them what she learned at
school—in her one week’s attendance there, just before school closed.
It wasn’t anything like any one else had ever learned, according to
Vicky. And even this little tot also appeared worried about her home,
and kept asking for Nicky, constantly. When she finally understood
that he was back from the doctor’s and ready to take her home, no
amount of coaxing could get a reply from her.

“Goin’ home,” was her declaration. “Me and Nicky. Nobody else.”

Cara and the other girls had attached no significance to their
insistence that “nobody else” should go along, but when Dudley offered
to put her in the car she pulled back and shouted:

“You can’t go to our house!”

Even Barbara laughed and tried to assure her that only Nicky was to
take her home. Nicky called out that it was “all right, come along and
hurry up,” but even then it took considerable persuading to get her
into the auto.

“Hey there, Babs!” called Ruth good-naturedly, “why can’t some of the
rest of us play nurse?”

“Yes,” chimed in Louise, “why can’t we take a ride?”

“That’s the way with a girl who gets into a nice little sport car,”
Ruth continued to jokingly bewail, “she won’t get out. Here _I_ could
fit in there just as well as not.”

“Oh, come along,” interrupted Dudley. “I’ve got to get back.”

“And Babs might just as well finish the job,” Cara declared, perhaps a
little anxious to have the “job” finished, for it was certainly very
greatly interfering with her party.

Finally Dudley gave warning that he was ready and going to start, and
then they were off.

Barbara held little Vicky in the back seat and its box-like
arrangement at first appeared to frighten the child. She seemed to
think it would snap shut on them, but again her brother’s words of
assurance quieted her fears.

“Only to the track,” Nicky reminded Dudley as they neared the
crossing. “Ain’t far from there.”

“All right, kid,” replied the boy driving, “we’ll dump you wherever
you say.”

“And don’t worry,” said Barbara emphatically, “no one is going to your
house, Nicky. We don’t even know where you live.”

“Sure,” said Nicky, his face beaming happily, as his friend Barbara
Hale offered him the positive assurance that he might hide away from
her and from her well-meaning friends.




                             CHAPTER VIII

                               CLOTHES


On their way back, naturally Dudley talked of the Italian children.

“What do you suppose those youngsters are so worried about? Seemed to
be dreadfully afraid that we would find out something; didn’t they?”
he asked Babs.

“Yes. But, after all, don’t you think people do spy dreadfully upon
poor folks, if they happen to be interested in them?” Barbara
returned.

“Spy?” Dudley seemed to resent that.

“Oh, you know what I mean,” Barbara quickly drew back. “I mean they
think they have to know all about the people they help. I’ve often
seen that, when we had a sewing circle and gave aprons to poor women,
the women of the sewing circle almost wanted a report upon every time
the old aprons were worn.” Barbara could not hide her dislike for the
prying social service sort.

Dudley laughed at that. “I suppose they are nosey,” he said merrily,
“when they give away a few pennies they seem to think they have a
right to butt in on everything. Well, I’ve got to say, I am a bit
curious just the same. Those youngsters _know_. They learn a lot
because they need to know it.”

“Dad says every creature is like that. Animals have developed all
their traits through necessity,” Barbara answered seriously.

“You know a lot too,” laughed the boy. “Not that _you_ need to.” This
was sort of an apology.

“Oh, but I do,” insisted Barbara, in turn laughing at the idea.
“Knowledge is power, you know.”

“Yes—maybe.” He paused as he swung his car around a corner. “You know
I lost on your coming to this party,” he continued presently. “I bet
you wouldn’t come.”

“Too bad I came.”

“Oh, no. Glad I lost, really, I’m awfully glad you came.” He was
wagging that red head of his like an animated signal light. “You see,
Cara is an awfully good sport.”

“I know that.”

“Oh say! I’m getting myself in trouble,” he laughed again. “I mean,
she’s better and more than just a sister to a fellow; she’s a whole
family.”

They were almost within sight of Billows and Barbara noticed that
Dudley had slowed down. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

“You see,” he pursued, “the girls all think you’re sort of different.”

“Why?” Barbara asked so suddenly and so frankly that Dudley’s cheeks
flared. He couldn’t have been blushing, yet his face certainly had
gone red.

“Oh,” he faltered, “I suppose because you don’t run around a lot. And
then, you are so fond of study.”

“I hate it,” flung back Barbara, unconsciously shifting her position,
which was alongside of him since Nicky’s departure.

“I mean, studying with your father.”

“That isn’t studying at all; it’s just experimenting. Don’t you like
to experiment?”

“Sometimes and with some things!” He sang that out in a way that meant
he liked a lark, liked fun, and liked to try out things that gave him
any fun in their trying.

But whether intentionally or not, he had admitted to Barbara the
general opinion held of her. She was different; Cara called it
elusive, Esther would have said it was stand-offish and Louise had
been heard to declare that Barbara Hale was just plain “stuck up.”

But Barbara knew. She might have had all of these various
personalities but she alone knew just why she was different. And she
wasn’t telling Dudley Burke, either. Not that he had an idea of
expecting such a confidence, but she had come to Cara’s party and he
rejoiced in that fact. She felt sort of tricked into an unpleasant
situation.

“It’s too bad,” she remarked presently, “that Nicky’s accident had to
take so much time. It must have spoiled all Cara’s fun this
afternoon.”

“But it hasn’t mine,” blurted out Dudley. “I’d rather drive around
with a boy’s cut-up arm than to stick around——”

“With girls!”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“You—certainly did.”

“All right then, with _some_ girls.”

“I won’t have you talk about my friends,” Barbara was laughing but not
willing to understand the boy as he wanted her to.

“And _you_ love them too, don’t you?” Dudley could play her evasion
game quite as well as she could do it herself.

“Why, of course I like the girls!” she flung back with so much fervor
that any one could see she was fearing a suspicion. She didn’t want
Dudley to think she was so unsocial as not to care for her new
companions.

The boy continued to tease. He brought up the subject of her
preference for Glenn Gaynor.

“Glenn’s more to your taste, I guess,” he remarked with assumed
indifference. “He knows something; girls are mostly dumb-bells.”

“Now Dudley, you don’t want to scrap, do you? I told you I _liked_ the
girls.” Certainly as a boy _he_ was frank.

“Well, anyhow,” he drawled. “I’m awfully glad you came, for I don’t
like them—all.”

There was neither any use for nor time for further arguments. They
were rolling down the drive, and the girls waiting for them were
squealing things about Babs being mean to stay away, and the whole
thing looking like a put-up job, so they managed to make known.

Barbara expected all this, for indeed it did look queer for her to
have been away from the girls practically all the afternoon. But Cara
made peace by hastily managing to get all the other girls, excluding
Barbara, into the little car. Two were assigned to the front seat with
Dud, and three in the rumble seat. Then she made Dudley give them a
ride.

“Anywhere,” she urged. “Just for a ride,” and the brother understood
that she was trying to please the girls by having him “show them off
around town.”

“You can play with Sniffy,” she laughingly told Barbara, as once more
the little car left the grounds, this time the driver reluctantly
turning towards the ocean.

“I’ve got to dress for dinner, you know,” he reminded Cara, as he
picked up speed “and——”

“Oh, we just want a whiff of ocean breeze,” she cut him short, while
the giggling girls each hoped that her particular friends in Sea
Cosset would see her as they flew.

Barbara entered the big house and turned at once to the room assigned
her. She felt very dusty and upset and therefore needed freshing up.
Also, she welcomed the chance to privately arrange her things,
although she was determined not to feel self-conscious about her
clothes.

Clothes!

The word was like a stone wall against which she was continually
bumping her head. There seemed no escape from it, and to the girl who
so lately had positively ignored the word when it loomed up in capital
letters, the sudden necessity of taking it seriously was very
discomforting. Barbara hated to feel limited by her appearance. Not
that she didn’t love pretty things, but because she felt them beyond
her reach. She was obliged to build up some other real interest, and
that had come to her as she naturally developed an aptitude for
helping her father.

Bugs, germs, cultures, and the other symbols of bacteriology meant
more to Barbara than frocks, hats, and articles of dainty apparel,
dear to the heart of every normal girl.

She was simply sacrificing her natural inclinations to those forced
upon her. But being a girl, almost care-free and decidedly courageous,
Barbara Hale hardly knew that she was making any sacrifice at all.

In Cara’s lovely green and gold room now, she had no intention of
analyzing the situation. But somehow now that she was here she
actually felt she liked it.

A little chuckle escaped her as she took from her bag the student’s
gown and the black cap. Her best stockings, the new pair called
“atmosphere” had been packed into the cap.

“Silly to bring it,” she reflected, “but I had to have something.” She
shook out the robe and surveyed the mortar-board hat critically.

An extra clothes’ tree had been placed by her bed (one of the twins),
just where she would be sure to understand that the articles hung upon
it were intended for her.

Thoughtful Cara! A beautiful lavender cloud of georgette proved to be
a party dress. Barbara touched it gingerly and then, since the mute
thing didn’t bite her, she became more familiar with it and examined
it, closely.

How lovely! Shaded lavender from orchid to purple with a golden silk
slip to throw the colors out. There was also a soft gray skirt with a
pearl-gray blouse and a velveteen short coat of jade green.

“But the girls would know,” she was thinking when she espied a note
pinned to the skirt. It was from Cara, of course, and it hinted that
Bab’s aunt in New York had surprised her with a box of lovely things.
This was the excuse suggested as Bab’s explanation if the girls seemed
suspicious.

“Why not?” Cara had asked naïvely in her note. “You could have an aunt
in New York, couldn’t you? And she could send you things?”

A twinge of hurt pride pricked Barbara at the idea. Cara was just a
jolly fun-loving girl, who believed it perfectly fair and square to
defend any reasonable situation with a reasonable excuse; but then it
was not Cara who was being defended. It was easy to do it for some one
else, but would she herself have accepted it?

No, Barbara did not love clothes well enough to go to much trouble for
them. She was afraid she wouldn’t have much fun in Cara’s finery,
although it was certainly lovely. But neither would she feel right to
refuse and hurt Cara. Which would be worse? To hurt her own pride or
to hurt Cara’s generosity?

“Oh, clothes!” she repeated again, “what a nuisance they are, either
to have or to need! They’re not really of such importance and yet we
are so proud we feel we must be all decked out like the poor helpless
Christmas trees. Everything must dazzle us or we don’t want it,” she
reflected cynically.

The room about her was beautiful indeed, soft and soothing in its
tones of gold and green, with no trifling objects stuck around to
offend the best taste. But except for a small row of books held by two
painted book-ends (from Italy) there was nothing in the whole room to
indicate mental personality. Cara was not reflected in her room.

Barbara’s room at home was old-fashioned, shabby, even cluttered with
books and bookish attributes, but it fairly shouted the name and
personality of Barbara Hale. Cara’s was the work of an expert
decorator; Barbara’s the result of her own individuality.

Shaking out the few garments upon which so much seemed to depend,
Barbara hurried now to change for dinner. She would wear the little
tub silk, its yellow and black stripes were vivid enough to be
especially summery, and although it was home-made, she felt there
could be nothing wrong with it. Its simplicity saved it from
complications.

“I suppose the other girls will wear more fancy things,” Babs
reasoned, “but this is all right.” So the striped tub silk was chosen
as a dinner dress, and, just as Barbara had expected, it proved to be
all right.

The girls were back from their ride and now made a merry, if somewhat
noisy, entrance.

“Easy to tell there is a boy within hearing,” was Barbara’s sly
reflection, for the way the girls giggled and chattered indicated an
audience. They never would have taken so much trouble merely to amuse
themselves.

“Oh, Babs!” called out Cara. “You missed it, we went slumming down the
railroad way.”

“Slumming!” repeated Barbara, a sudden fear taking possession of her.
Could they have sought out the little Italians to whom she had
promised no interference? “Whatever did you go down the railroad for?”
she asked breathlessly.

“Just for fun,” prattled Cara. “The girls wanted Dud to take them
where he took you, and he bet they wouldn’t enjoy the ride.” Cara was
peeling off her things and preparing to put on something pretty for
dinner. Barbara hardly knew how to question her without exciting
suspicion, but she just had to know whether or not those “giddy
things” had bothered poor little Nicky.

“Did you see the—Italian children?” Barbara finally managed to ask in
a tone she hoped was natural.

“I should say we did see them!” chanted Cara. “And say, Babs, they’re
the funniest kids——”

“Why? How are they funny?”

“Because they are trying to hide something in that shack of theirs,”
declared Cara. “They ran out, that is the boy did when he saw Dud’s
car, but quick as he saw _you_ were not in it, he turned and raced
back, shut the funny old door with a bang, and pulled down the shades
with the pictures on them. You would have thought we were the wicked
old landlord going to turn them out for their rent,” concluded Cara,
innocently.

“But why did Dud drive up there? He heard me tell Nicky we wouldn’t
bother them,” faltered the anxious Barbara.

“Why shouldn’t he? It’s a public place. But Babs,” said Cara, suddenly
noticing the effect of her words, “what’s the matter? Was there a
reason why we shouldn’t have gone there?”

“Oh, no, of course not. I just hated to frighten those children,” Babs
answered as lightly as she could. “You know how much excitement a
fancy looking car still creates in that sort of district. About like
an ambulance,” she finished laughing a little, with evident effort.

“Worse. The children were like bees around us. I never knew what
slumming in my own town could amount to,” said Cara. “But Babs, aren’t
you going to be a lamb and wear some of my useless things for me?” She
had been noticing the untouched garments on the little clothes’ tree,
and now ventured the question.

“Oh yes, of course I am, and thank you loads, Cara,” replied Barbara
impulsively. “But just this evening I felt I might be better
understood if I wore—the common garden variety.” In this speech
Barbara had to tactfully refuse to wear the loaned garments.

“That’s a real sweet little dress and looks lovely on you,” Cara in
turn declared. “As a matter of fact, Babs, we can’t always buy that
charming simplicity. It’s just perfect and makes _you_ stand out
instead of hiding you.”

“No, it is not popular enough to warrant the trade making it,” laughed
Barbara, as they both turned to finish their dressing.

And now the worry about Nicky was superseding the more common worry
about clothes.




                              CHAPTER IX

                              SUSPICIONS


The dinner party was spoiled for Barbara. All she could think of was
Nicky slamming his door in the face of those thoughtless girls who
wanted to go slumming. As if the habits and homes of the poor should
furnish them with amusement!

And she could imagine little Vicky jerking down the shades, the shades
with the funny pictures on. But she could not quite imagine what might
be the real cause of their alarm. All this seemed more than mere
suspicion of those in the more agreeable walks of life.

Cara’s family had given her the exclusive use of the big dining-room
for her party, and not even Dudley was present at dinner. The girls
would, no doubt, have been delighted to have had a few boys present,
but Cara had other ideas. She would give the first meal to the girls
as they do it at college, except, of course, that the college menu
could in no way compare to the Billows.

Two waitresses glided about attending to, and even anticipating, the
girls’ slightest wish, and Barbara was glad to feel at home amid their
ministrations.

“Not a question of clothes now,” she prompted herself, noticing more
than one of the girls were showing some nervousness.

Cara easily led the conversation, but Louise and Esther would revert
to the slumming party. That seemed to them to be the real event of the
day.

“Babs, you should have been along,” said Louise, a little pointedly.
“I know you just _love_ that little Italian.”

“But Nicky was really hurt this afternoon,” Babs contended. “I can’t
see how you forgot that. They are human, just as we are, and his folks
probably were just as alarmed about his cut arm as ours might have
been. Arms and cuts run about the same, I should think,” she said
sharply.

“Oh, those people don’t mind cuts,” flung back Esther Deane
disdainfully, and in total disregard of the impropriety of talking of
“cuts” at a dinner table. “They just flourish knives the way some
people point their fingers.”

“Esther!” exclaimed Cara, in unassumed surprise. “You really mustn’t
speak so of——”

“Babs’ pets,” interrupted Ruth Harrison, who was the one girl who
could say a thing like that unintentionally. She did not mean to hurt
Babs, but the whole conversation was hurting her. She resented the
girls’ sneering at the children whom she had become fond of through
sympathy. Also she felt like something of an outcast herself, for she
did not belong to this indifferent leisure class. She had been working
and earning money for two years outside of school-time, even if it
were such work as might be termed professional.

“Nicky sells junk and we sell bugs,” she had reminded her father, when
he too had objected to her interest in the Italians.

“But you’ll find they are hiding black handers in that shack,”
persisted Ruth, who would not look Cara’s way and therefore could not
see the warnings she was flashing from her eyes at her.

It had been a wonderful dinner, from the ruby bouillon to the snowy
sherbet, but to Babs the food was merely incidental. She was annoyed,
mad she would call it. Why had Dudley taken the girls over the
railroad when there were endless other beautiful drives to be enjoyed?

The noisy arrival of a car load of boys, including Dudley and Dick
Landers who had dined at the Club, cut short the girls’ dinner—which
was a real charity, for the meal had been dragging along like a
box-party picnic.

“We’re all going to the movies,” Cara announced. “That may not be a
very original way to spend a house-party evening, but there’s a
wonderful picture at the Ritz and the boys will take us.”

“Great!” gurgled Lida Bent. She hadn’t said much all during dinner,
and one might have suspected she was being disappointed in Cara’s
party. Lida was a pretty blonde, addicted to fancy dressing, and
perhaps the fact that she was so beautifully “dolled up” in pale blue
with creamy lace inserts, and was wearing shaded blue stockings—the
most expensive sort—and all that, might easily account for her joy
when Cara imparted the glad tidings of the boys and the movies.

As they hurried from the dining-room Dudley pinched Barbara’s arm. It
was a signal. He wanted to speak to her.

She answered with a defiant look. He would have to explain to her why
he had taken the girls to Nicky’s.

“Jump in my car when you’re ready,” he said very quietly while she
hesitated.

“Isn’t Glenn here?” she asked presently. It was clear to her that she
should not desert an old friend like Glenn for one so new as Dudley.

“Yes, but Cara’s taking the big car and he will go with the crowd.
I’ve got to take mine,” Dudley added, as an excuse for asking Barbara.
“If you want to ask another girl there’s lots of room, of course.” He
drawled that “of course” in open mockery. Why take on another girl?

“All right,” replied Barbara. “I’ll ask Ruth.”

Now this was the very thing she didn’t want to do, because Ruth’s
presence would prevent her private talk with Dudley, but she was
annoyed. She was ready to quarrel with Dudley. He had heard all she
said to little Nicky, and he could not have helped understanding her
promise _not_ to go to his house.

“I suppose you’re sore,” the boy made a chance to say, “but it wasn’t
my fault.”

“No? I suppose your car knew the way so well it skidded right along
over the tracks.”

Dudley looked at her sharply. This was a new Babs. She was sharp and
bitter as a boy would have been. And scrappy.

“Oh, say!” he exclaimed, his own eyes flashing defiantly. “I told you
I could explain.”

“Got to go,” Babs reminded him, for the other girls were actually
coming down the stairs and she had not yet gone up. Also she didn’t
want to hear his excuse.

It seemed as if Dudley’s bright-red hair always took part in his
emotions. Perhaps it pricked him or tickled him, or something, for he
ran his fingers through it and spoiled it so far as the part went,
unmarking a beautiful straight line of curls that began at his
forehead and made a border right over the top of his head. Boys hate
curly hair, but girls love it—even on boys.

Babs was smiling as she left him. She liked to punish boys, and her
first inclination was to “cut him,” to refuse to ride with him. Only
her own selfish determination to find out more about the slumming
party prompted her acceptance of his invitation.

“Oh, hello there Babs,” sang out a familiar voice as she was almost up
the stairs.

“Hello Glenn!” she answered happily. It was so good to see Glenn; he
always understood everything.

“See you later,” he added, and she knew what that meant. It meant that
he expected to be with her at the movie party. He surely thought she
would ride out with the crowd in the big car; how could he guess
Dudley had asked her to go in his?

Cara was down and alongside of Glenn before Babs could think further.
Of course, the girls had all been “crazy” to know Glenn. And he was
good-looking. A little catch pinched her throat as she saw Cara hurry
the boy out with her. Glenn could drive any car. No doubt he would
drive Cara’s. And he was——Oh, pshaw! why fuss? Of course Glenn and
Cara were perfectly suited to be chums. He was charming. Perhaps Babs
had never given him credit for half of his good points. But then, with
her he was merely some one interested in bacteriology, while with Cara
a good-looking, well-mannered boy could become a wonderful pal. She
had time for palship.

But he, Glenn, was Babs’ chum. They had worked and played together.

“Coming?” It was Dudley calling her.

“Just a moment—I must find Ruth,” replied Babs, trying to clear her
mind from its petty jealousies.

“Ruth’s in the other car. But here’s Dick; we’ll grab him for a
chaperon,” proposed Dudley, just as Dick Landers swung himself over
the porch rail and announced to Dud that he was making himself late
and they wouldn’t see the “funny-picture” if he didn’t “get a move
on.”

Dick was another nice boy. Babs saw at a glance how brown he was, how
slow and easy going he was, and she also noticed he drawled and
dragged and sang his words.

“From the South,” she was deciding, as Dudley introduced Dick Landers
from “Geo-gia.”

It was the funniest thing how Babs persistently got herself in with
the boys without having any idea of leaving the girls. Here she was
again with the two boys for company and no girl. Would the girls
believe her when she would tell them she had expected to have Ruth
along?

The big car with all the others had gone on ahead, and now Babs was
following in the little roadster with Dick on one side of her and
Dudley on the other. Here again she found herself perfectly at ease,
just as she had with two waitresses hovering around her at the table.
After all it was pleasant to be so situated.

The boys were jolly companions, each trying to outdo the other at
saying smart things. They teased as boys always do, and when Babs
admitted under Dud’s severe fire of questions, that she did like
little Italian “Kids” who sold junk, and that she was “sore” because
the other girls had followed her tracks that afternoon and had gone to
look for more junk; then Dick relieved the strain by telling wonderful
tales about the old “junk” down “Sauth.”

“Best old andirons,” he insisted, “the funny old black iron stuff
mostly. But of c’ose there’s lots of brasses, too.”

“Did the girls want to go to Nicky’s to buy stuff?” Babs interrupted
the Southern story to ask Dudley. “Why should they do a thing like
that?”

“Oh, you know what girls are when they get a notion in their heads,”
he evaded. “I’ll tell you about it when you’re in better humor, Babs,”
he ended just as they pulled up to the curb to enter the motion
picture theater.

Ruth came to the rescue. She left the other girls and boys—there were
two boys, Glenn Gaynor and Andrew Norton—and skipped along to where
Babs stood waiting.

“Heard you wanted me along, Babs,” Ruth said merrily, “and I’ll say I
wanted to be along.” She gave a significant glance with a sly chuckle
at the Southern boy. “I’ll bet you had a fine time.”

“Yes, I just missed you,” Babs interrupted her, making tight hold of
Ruth’s arm. “But don’t escape me now. I want to ask you something.”

There was no getting away from it; Babs felt more and more guilty. She
could not get the picture of those frightened Italian children out of
her mind, and to think that _she_ had promised and that her friend
should have almost immediately have done the very thing she had
promised not to do. Babs had told Nicky that they would not go near
his home, that they would go no further than the tracks, where he
insisted upon leaving Dud’s car. Then, according to the scraps of
information that Babs had gleaned, the girls had deliberately gone
across the tracks, down the little alley-way and for all she knew
right up to Nicky’s door. They had even seen the pictures on the queer
paper window shades.

The party occupied almost a full row of chairs in the theater, and
Ruth was next to Babs on one side with Dick next her on the other.
Between every pause Babs tried to ask Ruth a question, but since
talking while a film is being shown is impossibly impolite, she made
little headway with obtaining an explanation.

“But what difference did it make?” Ruth blurted out. “Why shouldn’t we
go there?”

“Because, when Nicky got his arm hurt and we took him home,” Babs
whispered, “I promised we wouldn’t go there again. You know his folks
are awfully bitter since they took his father away.”

“Oh.” Ruth added no comment. She was sure to believe and understand
Babs, for Ruth Harrison was neither jealous nor suspicious.

The picture was interesting enough to evoke peals of laughter from all
those about her, but Babs could not center her attention upon it. When
a small boy with his “tattered dog” was shown, she saw Nicky, the big
pleading eyes of the screen child accusing her of betraying a child’s
trust.

“That’s what makes it so horribly mean,” she kept thinking. “He
trusted _me_, and, of course, he’ll think it was all my fault.”

Just then Ruth nudged her, very insistently.

“Say, Babs,” she whispered, “no fooling, there is something mighty
queer about those Italians. I’ll tell you what _I_ think when I get a
chance.”

But the chance could not be made during scraps of such whispered
conversation as the two girls were having in a crowded “movie” house.




                              CHAPTER X

                        HOW GIRLS CHOOSE CHUMS


When the girls had quite exhausted all their powers of teasing Babs
for again going off with the boys—just as she knew they would—she
decided to ride to the ice-cream place in the big car, and she also
decided to sit in the back with all the girls.

“Take your boys,” Babs told them, in imitation of their own manner.
“For my part I’m just dying for a chat with you girls. Don’t you
realize I’ve hardly become acquainted yet?” This last was said in a
comical mimicking way, just as if she were some one of real importance
who had been so busy with a whole lot of social affairs that she
really couldn’t reach all the friends who were—perhaps?—pining for her
attention.

“Oh, we know all about that,” replied Louise. “It must be an awful
bore to be so popular.” Louise was not being sarcastic, just flippant
this time.

“And the peasants—those bothersome Italians——” Esther Dean remarked.
“Babs dear, you really should not mingle so freely with the gentry.”

“The gentry? You mean the bourgeois——” broke in Ruth.

“Hey, hey!” called back Glenn Gaynor from the front seat. “What is
this, anyway, a test or something? Where are we going? That’s what _I_
want to know.” He was driving.

“We’re going to Hill’s, of course,” answered Cara. “And if we don’t go
straight there we’ll never find a place to sit down, to say nothing of
getting a dish of ice-cream.”

It was a wonderful summer evening, and behind the rose-covered lattice
that so beautifully screened Hill’s ice-cream tables, the girls and
boys of Cara Burke’s party thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Babs almost
forgot little Nicky’s troubles, as she laughed and chatted and “showed
off” to her very best advantage, her one regret being that her father
didn’t happen along to the drug-store that evening to see how well she
was doing.

After all it was lovely to be in a girl’s world. She was surprised to
find how jolly it was, so much better than being alone and thinking
about “bugs,” the term she usually applied to the bacteriological
germs her father kept himself so busily occupied with.

“Different in one day,” she thought, for Babs was sure to think. She
had a habit of analyzing things within and without, and she was not
deceiving herself now. All that “difference” which people would insist
upon ascribing to her was no difference at all. It was merely a matter
of environment. When alone with her father, with Glenn for a
student-companion she was one sort of Babs, but when surrounded by
happy young friends, such as were with her now, she was decidedly
another sort.

“Enjoying yourself, Babs?” Cara made chance to ask. She sat at the
next table with Dick and Louise and had been watching Babs.

“Wonderfully,” replied Babs, smiling that Cara could have so easily
divined her thoughts. But, as a matter of fact, Barbara’s expression
just then was easy enough to interpret. She was smiling happily all
over her face.

Persons passing in and out also smiled and whispered. It was “Cara
Burke’s party”, they might have been heard to remark, and Babs was not
the only one of the party proud to be in her particular place. It was
well worth while to be there.

“And I didn’t want to come,” Barbara secretly charged herself. “I
would never have known what I missed.”

When they reached home the boys delayed for a while out on the big
white porch. It was then that Dudley spoke privately to Babs, after
managing to get her apart from the others.

“Listen,” he implored. “I’ve got to tell you. I know you’re sore——”

“What _did_ you take the girls there for?” she broke in sharply. She
was referring, of course, to their slumming and the Italian children.

“But the girls were saying such crazy things about the kids,” Dudley
protested. “You never heard such rot.”

“What—rot?”

“About some black handers being hidden in that shack.”

Barbara’s mark of contempt was not quite a word—a mere suggestion of
one.

“As if that nonsense should have made you forget your promise,” she
presently continued bitterly.

“I didn’t forget it.”

“No?” Again that seething scorn. Babs knew how to use her voice when
she wanted to be sarcastic.

“Oh, say!” The boy was despairing of making her understand him. “Just
wait until I tell you. You see, Louise or Esther, I don’t know which
began to—well, to suggest that little Nicky was one of a gang. Oh, it
was so silly, Babs, I just got mad and drove them over there to prove
they were crazy.” Dudley Burke could be just as independent as Barbara
Hale.

“Did you prove it?” sarcasm again.

“I tell you, honestly, I thought I was doing a good thing. I thought
we would just run over there and I’d whistle for Nicky, and when he
came out I’d ask him if he had any more candlesticks for sale,” Dudley
explained, simply.

His distress and his sincerity broke down Babs’ fighting spirit. How
could _she_ blame him? He had actually tried to do something to help
the little Italians. He could not have guessed at her unreasonable
fears.

“Oh, I know, Dud,” she said more pleasantly, “and I believe you. You
would not—make fun of them.”

“Make fun of them? I should say not. Those youngsters are smart, and
they’re—well, they’ve got a lot of our kind of kids beat,” he ended,
his selection of words having nothing to do with his loyalty to the
Italians.

“And I know it’s queer of me to act so cut up about it,” Babs
admitted. “You would think that _I_ were trying to hide something
too.”

“I wouldn’t, but maybe some others would,” Dud rejoined, rather
hurriedly for the girls were calling them insistently.

“But say, Dud,” Babs began again, “did the children really act
suspicious?”

“I should say they did. The way they snapped those old shades down.
It’s a wonder they didn’t pull them off their springs.”

“I didn’t suppose they were more than just timid,” Babs continued.
“You know how foreigners are. They have an idea the whole world is
their enemy, I guess.”

“Not youngsters who go to American schools; they know better. No,
Babs, I don’t believe it was just scare, it was alarm. They were
afraid we would go to the door, although they slammed it good and
hard, you just bet,” Dudley declared emphatically.

“But others must go there——”

“They stick by their own kind though, clannish, I mean,” the boy
explained. “If there really was something to hide in that house I’ll
bet the whole neighborhood would help them to hide it.”

“But what could it be?”

“Haven’t an idea. But, of course, Nicky will come around again. He’ll
count me a good customer for his junk.” Dud laughed outright at the
idea.

“And here we have been getting the girls after us again,” laughed Babs
in her turn. “Isn’t it dreadful the way I’ve been running off with you
today? I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Good thing to give them something to gab about,” Dud flung over his
shoulder as the girls and boys flocked around them, pretending all
sorts of punishment for their delay in joining in the general fun.

Dudley was so nice, Babs had to admit later, when quiet was descending
upon the Burke household.

“Just as nice as Glenn,” she reasoned, “but perhaps all boys were
almost as nice when they had had such chances of refinement and
environment.”

And the girls? Still a little stubborn on that point, Babs was not
willing to pay her own sex such a sweeping compliment. The girls were
“nice” of course, much nicer than she had ever given them credit for
being, but they were “show-offs” just the same. If they hadn’t been
they would never have gone down into the Italian district.

And if Esther and Louise were not always picking flaws in folks’
affairs they wouldn’t have told and retold the silly stories about
poor Nicky’s father, who was locked up in jail. The idea of even
suspecting that he might have escaped and might be in hiding there,
was absurd. As if his house would not have been searched, had he
escaped. And who ever said he had escaped, anyhow?

Cara was returning from her bathroom now and she was wearing the
loveliest yellow silk gown. It had little flutings of blue ribbons and
there were blue-birds embroidered on it, just as if they had flown
there.

Babs had not yet undressed, but the sight of Cara recalled her own
robe—the hideous black cloth college gown! However could she take that
out? How explain her idea of the dormitory masquerade? How could she
make a joke of it, anyway?

“I left some robes in the rooms,” Cara said indifferently. “I thought
the girls would hardly bring any, just around the corner.” This was
Cara’s way of doing kindness without display.

And this was Barbara’s chance to mention the college gown. She
hesitated. Pride was stronger than reason with her, and she didn’t
know that all her boasted frankness about her humble place in life,
about her home-made clothes, her own-made hats, her preference for
study instead of for play—all this was merely humoring her pride. And
yet it had been brave of her to accept and make the most of her
position. Thousands of girls might consider her “well off,” and very
fortunate because, compared to themselves, she was fortunate. Compared
to Cara Burke she was _poor_. Of course it was all merely a matter of
what one compared with.

Barbara watched Cara brush her hair. It was bobbed, of course, but
lovely and glossy, crow black, and it encased Cara’s head like a
sculptured cap.

“Your hair is lovely,” Babs said as she watched her. “Aren’t you
dreadfully tired of curls?”

“Well, since I’ve never had any I suppose I’m not really tired of
them, but I do think the boys have the best of us in the matter of
hair styles.” She paused in her brushing to make a better part. “If we
just got used to ourselves fixed up more simply I suppose we would
like ourselves quite as well.”

“Surely we would,” chimed in Babs. “It’s only training. Our eyes
expect certain effects and we feel we must humor our eyes.”

Cara laid her brush down on the dressing table and swung around to
face Barbara.

“You know an awful lot, don’t you Babs?” she said. Her tone was filled
with admiration.

“Why, no I don’t, Cara. About lots of things I am terribly—ignorant.”

“I mean in your way of thinking things out. Dud says you’re as smart
as a boy, and that from Dud is—something!”

Babs laughed. “To be as smart as a boy, as smart as some boys wouldn’t
mean a lot; would it, Cara?” she countered.

“No. But _he_ meant, of course, as smart as a smart boy——”

“Smarter than a smart boy?”

“Just let’s call it smart,” suggested Cara, but there was a
seriousness about her manner that did not chime in with her words.
Cara Burke was evidently trying to understand Barbara Hale.

Barbara was merely beginning to undress. She had never been so poky.
She felt very unreal. All, or at least most of the things, she had
planned to do she wasn’t doing, and she hated to change her mind.
Pride again ruled her, for in the “making up of her mind” to anything,
Barbara was what would be commonly called stubborn. She didn’t call it
that; she considered it weak and foolish to be changeable. All of
which must be explained to explain Barbara.

“But, just the same,” Cara continued speaking after a short pause,
“_you_ are smart.”

Barbara sighed. “Cara,” she sort of whispered for she was feeling
queer, “I’m not really. Because I do things I am called upon to do I
may seem different. But it isn’t that. It’s just because I am
differently situated.”

Cara jumped up and coming over to where Barbara was sitting, on one of
the ivory twin beds, threw her arms around her.

“We’re going to be chums, aren’t we, Babs?” she said warmly. “You may
not admit you’re smart, but I think you are, and I’ve always longed to
be chums with a girl like you.”

“Like me?” Barbara could feel her face burn. She was not at all what
this lovely, simple-minded, frankly honest girl was thinking her to
be. She wasn’t smart, she wasn’t different, she wasn’t “high-brow,”
she was only a poser, one who was pretending. “Cara, I’m afraid you
are going to be dreadfully disappointed in me,” she managed to say
finally. “I’m not really anything but plain stubborn.”

“Babs!” exclaimed Cara, bestowing upon her more and more girlish
admiration. “Do you know I planned this little party just to get
acquainted with you?”

“You didn’t, really!”

“Yes I did,” pursued the girl in that golden robe. “I even bet with
Dud that I could get you to come.”

“And now that you’ve got me here, what have I brought you?” Babs’
deep-blue eyes were as soft as velvet violets, as she, in turn, gazed
lovingly at Cara Burke.

“Oh, a lot. You couldn’t understand, of course, Babs, but you must
have noticed how jealous all the other girls were. I’m sure they have
been talking about it all night or they would have been at our door.
Here they come now.”

And at the unmistakable sounds of suppressed merry-making (it was
almost midnight) Babs jumped up, and without giving herself a second
for any silly consideration, she got into the black cap and gown.

The girls were knocking at the door.




                              CHAPTER XI

                          THE MIDNIGHT RIDE


Cara had scurried off and Babs was hiding behind the door, as she
opened it. Giggling and spluttering in their hilarity they tumbled in,
the Indian girl, in full regalia, leading the raid.

“Ee-yah! Gum-bow-wah, Minne-ha-ha, See-la,” chanted the one posing as
the Indian. She was Ruth Harrison, of course, for it was Ruth who had
so quickly decided upon the masquerade when she met the girls that
afternoon. She hadn’t remembered about a pretty robe, so she turned
the matter into a joke. This was the result of it.

“Approach, Daughter of the Sun,” spoke Barbara, stepping out from her
hiding and assuming the pose of a very majestic Portia.

“Oh, how stunning! Barbara! Are you really a college girl?” exclaimed
Louise, surprised and awed at the spectacle in a genuine college cap
and gown. Barbara did indeed look like a young college girl, and her
dignified personality seeming to add inches to her classic height as
she stood before them.

“Wonderful!” Esther chimed in, while Lida seemed spellbound. Ruth, the
erstwhile Indian maiden, went stamping around, uttering guttural
sounds more like grunts and groans, however, than like anything
Indian. Lida, in her heavenly blue, chosen to suit her pale blondness,
was scarcely more noticeable than an unlighted candle, as she stood
by. But on the whole the girls in their much-talked-of “robes” made
quite a little chorus.

“Where’s Cara?” some one asked while the group lined up in mock ballet
fashion.

“Yes, where is she?” pressed Louise. They seemed to be expecting
something interesting from Cara.

“She was here a minute ago,” Babs replied.

Just then the door opened again and in walked—a bride!

“Oh, how lovely. How wonderful!”

After the first burst of admiration they all stood around speechless,
for Cara was gowned in the full bridal outfit of a very old-fashioned
style, the skirt of her “silk muslin” dress standing out as if it were
very stiffly starched (but it was the sort of organdie that held it
so)—and her waist!

“How in the world did you get into it?” asked Lida.

“I didn’t—Lottie put me into it. She has taken care of the chest that
has held this make-up for years. It was my grandmother’s,” Cara told
her guests proudly, pirouetting around to show off to better
advantage.

“But the veil?” Louise was fingering the tulle mesh that floated from
Cara’s black head. How she held it in over her “bob” was rather
mysterious.

“Grandmother’s also,” Cara told the admiring girls. “Aren’t these
little sleeves sweet?”

Up to this time Cara had not seen Babs in the college costume, nor had
she seen Ruth in the Indian outfit, for these two particular stars had
managed to keep in the background while the bride was being inspected.
But she espied them both now! And she fairly gasped in astonishment.

“How ever did you do it?” she demanded. “I thought I had the original
masquerade idea.”

“Ideas go in flocks,” laughed Babs. “Why don’t you cheer for our Alma
Mater?”

“Oh, girls!” breathed Esther. “Aren’t we dreadful? It must be past
midnight and we certainly aren’t whispering.”

“No need to,” replied Cara in full voice. “We have this end of the
house to ourselves and we’re having a party. But do let me see you,
Babs, a real, honest-to-goodness cap and gown! Any one can be a
bride——”

“I don’t know about that,” interrupted Louise. “We would have to have
a man to be a bride——”

“Oh, Weasy! How literal! I mean this sort of bride, of course,”
insisted Cara, sailing around so that her veil flew out in a lovely
silken cloud.

“Oh, let’s have a show!” proposed Ruth. “I’ll be—who’ll I be?” she
floundered, feeling a little uncertain on her Indian lore.

“Ruth Harrison! That Indian robe is just too darling!” cooed Cara.
“And your feathers! I think you girls were mighty smart to think of
our midnight frolic.”

“But what a pity the boys couldn’t see us?” sighed Esther, about
half-way in earnest.

“The boys—see you! In that butterfly thing with—you got anything under
it?” asked Louise, innocently.

“Louise St. Clair!” gasped Esther, pretending to be terribly shocked.
“I’d have you know I’m fully garbed,” and she tossed off the pretty
robe to display a still lovelier set of blue silk pajamas. Reasonably,
Esther was pleased to have so good a chance to display her pretty
things, for as Ruth might say “the fairies who see things while we
sleep may love them, but they’re awfully quiet about it.”

“Let’s have a march,” proposed Babs. “Cara, you lead and I’ll be the
magistrate who is to perform the ceremony.”

This was fun. The girls in the pretty robes were acting as
bridesmaids, the Indian Girl was the groom, while Portia in her severe
black robe (and the mortar-board cap was actually becoming to Babs)
stood judiciously upon a low stool, her book in her hand statuesquely,
and her face molded into an appropriate expression of severity.

In turn each of them tried to hum a march, but the time would jumble
into a foxtrot or into some other undignified dance time.

“Oh, I know,” exclaimed Lida. “It’s ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas!’ Try
that.”

“Bananas!” squealed Louise. “March to that! Why it’s wooden legged! A
hop skip and jump. Lida Bent, that’s the one best foxtrot.”

“I thought——”

“What’s that?” Ruth interrupted Lida. “I heard something.”

“So did I,” breathed Cara in a hushed voice. She seemed frightened
suddenly, for the noise was too unmistakably close by.

“Oh! A man is—groaning!”

“Hark!”

They huddled together in a far corner away from the window that opened
on a little upper porch. No one spoke. They certainly had heard a very
queer noise, all of them.

“Some one is calling,” Babs insisted, moving as if to answer the call.

“Calling! It’s past twelve o’clock,” replied Cara.

“And a storm is coming. Hear the thunder,” gasped Esther, shuddering
in her fright.

Again came the call; surely it was a call, but what a hoarse awful
voice intoned it!

“Oh!” cried Lida in real terror, for just at that moment something had
hit the window.

“Maybe Dudley and the boys are playing tricks,” suggested Babs,
brightly.

“No, Mother had his promise they wouldn’t play any tricks, late,” Cara
insisted. “No, Dud would _never_ throw things at the window. He knows
better than to do that.”

“Well, some one _is_ throwing things at the window,” Babs insisted,
“and _I’m_ going to see who it is.”

“You mustn’t, Babs,” Louise implored the girl who had separated
herself from the shrinking group and was moving towards the window.

But she did move towards it, nevertheless.

“I can see the lighthouse flash its light,” she declared. “I guess
they’re getting ready for the storm. Oh!” Babs sprang back just as
something landed on the porch. It was heavier than the things thrown
before, and as it crossed the window-sill the girls could see it was a
stick. It almost sailed in the open window and did disarrange the soft
curtains with its pointed end that rested over the sill.

“We’ll have to call some one,” Cara insisted, forgetting all about her
bridal costume as the other girls also had forgotten how they were
clothed.

“Hey there! Are ye all dead!”

A man’s voice! Close at the window! So close the girls could not now
feel safe to cross in front of the window to open the door to call.

“Oh, mercy!” groaned Louise. “He’ll be in the room in a minute! What
ever shall we do?”

“Keep still!”

“I see him——”

“Oh!” shrieked Lida. “A big black face——”

“Say there! Let me in! Are ye all dead! I’m in a hurry!” This command
came through the window in a gruff, heavy voice.

“Some one wants something,” Babs declared. “We had better speak to
him!”

“Oh, don’t please,” begged Ruth, who was apparently more frightened
than the others, although this was unusual for Ruth.

“We must,” declared Babs. “There’s no danger with all of us together.”

“But he may be crazy——”

“Will you push that window up?” the voice was ordering gruffly.

And the order came from a man who now stood in clear view. His face
was not pleasant—it was old and weather-beaten, and he was wearing one
of those queer hats known as S’ou’-westers.

“Looks like a fisherman,” Cara said more confidently.

But a sudden thrusting up of the window-pane no longer left time for
speculation. The next moment the girls gazed amazedly at an old man in
the garb of a seaman, and Babs, at least, instantly recognized him as
Davy Quiller, the lighthouse keeper.

“Davy!” she gasped. “What ever do you want here?”

“I want oil, lamp oil, and I’ve got to get it,” thundered the
intruder. “I knew you were up ’cause I could see you per’radin’
around. And the rest of this house must be dead ’cordin’ to the way
they sleep. I’ve been a-poundin’ on every winder an’ door. And I
couldn’t wait another minute. Got any kerosene oil on these premises?”

Babs and Cara understood. The lighthouse tender had to have oil for
his light, and he was justified in seeking it even under these unusual
circumstances.

“I don’t believe we ever use oil here,” Cara spoke up. “But I’ll find
out,” she hurried towards the door to call a servant.

“Mighty sorry to spoil your—show,” the old man muttered. “But I had to
get in here. I’ll get right down again and wait outside. ’T’ain’t any
harder than walking downstairs,” and he was stepping over the rail,
down to the first porch with the alacrity of a much younger man.
Captain Davy Quiller was “no slouch.”

By now the household had been pretty well aroused, and the girls, who
had merely fancy robes on, were scurrying to get into something more
presentable. Cara in her bridal attire and Babs in her collegiate
outfit however, seemed little concerned about their personal
appearance. They sensed an emergency, and that at the lighthouse, so
their search for lamp oil was added to that of Captain Quiller’s. Ruth
Harrison, the Indian girl, was another who felt dressed enough for
appearance on the porch, so that when the big arc light was flashed
on, as most of the Burke household assembled beneath it, Babs, Cara
and Ruth made a striking picture. Among those present were Dudley
Burke and Dick Landers, his house guest, and of course the boys
immediately set up “a howl” when they beheld “the show.”

“Keep still!” ordered Cara severely. “Don’t be silly. We’ve got to get
oil. Captain Quiller, where do they keep oil around here?” she asked
competently.

“That’s just it, they don’t,” the seaman replied. “Of course I always
get my supply from the station, but something went wrong with their
delivery this week. I thought I had plenty for a couple of more
nights, mistook an empty for a full can—but this afternoon I found out
my blunder,” he admitted, “and I have a little fellow runs messages
for me. I’d trust him with my hat,” the captain declared firmly, his
hat being a very important possession of his, “I can’t see what
happened to him! Well, I must be a-running,” he wound up, turning to
leave.

“We’ll take you around in the car,” Dudley promptly offered. “Just you
wait a minute, ’till I—hitch up.”

“I suppose it would be quicker,” admitted the captain. “But you see
that storm a’comin’?” he asked Mr. Burke, as if the gentleman of the
house was entitled to some attention.

“Yes; looks like a hummer,” Mr. Burke replied.

“An’ it’s blacker out there,” pointing toward the sea, “than ’tis in
here,” the captain declared. “’An my light’s the Eye of the Lord to
the sailors,” he said, lowering his voice reverently.

Dudley had hurried off for the car but Dick tarried on the porch,
joking with the girls about their “show”, that they hadn’t invited the
boys to see. Babs and Cara were standing aside with the grown-ups.

“We can go along,” Cara said quietly to Babs.

“But how about the other girls?” Babs inquired.

“They wouldn’t want to go, but, of course, I’ll ask them,” Cara
replied, and she did so promptly.

“No, I guess not,” Louise answered. “Looks as if the storm was almost
here and _I’m_ scared to death of thunder-storms.”

So were Lida and Esther, they said, but Ruth agreed to go with Cara
and Babs, so it happened that those most fantastically attired piled
into the touring car, after Captain Quiller.

Babs, being almost fully dressed, just went along in the college robe,
at Cara’s suggestion, and Cara actually kept on the bridal dress,
because she declared it was too much trouble to get it off, merely
throwing a light cape over her shoulders and tossing the bridal veil
at Louise as she dashed off. The veil rested comically over Louise’s
head and gave the girls on the porch something to joke about as those
in the car rumbled off.

“I sense an adventure,” predicted Babs, hopefully. “It seems to me,
Cara, you should remember your house party.”

“And call it ‘The Midnight Race for Lighthouse Oil.’ I will,” agreed
Cara, while Dudley and the seaman discussed the problem of finding oil
at that hour of the night.

Then a vivid flash of lightning followed by a splitting clap of
thunder silenced them all.




                             CHAPTER XII

                      DUMPED BUT NOT DISCOURAGED


The blackness of the night made the lightning flashes all the more
terrifying. Dudley took a firm grip on his steering wheel, while the
girls shuddered.

“Pretty slick lightnin’,” muttered Captain Quiller, “an’ my light
hasn’t oil enough to keep her goin’ long.”

“And you think you can get it over at the little Italian store?”
Dudley asked. “How in the world can we expect to wake the store man
up? I imagine an Italian store-keeper might be a pretty good sleeper.”

“Might at that,” agreed the captain. “But we sailors have to trust an
awful lot to luck. Somethin’s sure to turn up. Ain’t no countin’ on
what it’ll be.”

Flash after flash of lightning slashed through the blackness. Cara, as
the olden time bride, and Babs as the collegian, holding between them
the frightened Indian girl, Ruth—as if an Indian girl ever would be
frightened of a thunderstorm—clung more closely to one another in real
fear. Suddenly Babs jerked aside from the others. The car was scarcely
moving along a narrow turn and she clutched Cara’s arm excitedly.

“I see a light in those bushes!” she exclaimed. “Look! Over there by
that white birch tree!”

The headlights of the big car threw out such a glare that it was easy
enough to distinguish objects along the way. Dudley slowed his car
down as Babs cried out.

“Yes, that’s somethin’. Mebby some ’un’ hurt,” the captain suggested.

“Hey! Hey!” came a shrill call. “Over here, by the ditch!”

“That’s a boy,” declared Dudley promptly.

“Yes, and it sounds like _our_ boy,” added Babs, already on the car
step ready to go in search of who ever was calling.

“You mean——”

“I mean Nicky. Hey! That you Nicky!” She called out loudly, for
thunder claps still continued to roar through the night with
terrifying frequency.

“Ye-ah!” came the answer. “That’s me! I’m—I’m stuck!”

Even the bride in her white silk muslin gown, over which a flying cape
did very little to protect it from the rain, ran towards the eye of
light in the blackness and the clue of direction given by the boy’s
voice.

“Look out for deep cuts,” the captain warned them. He, of course, was
armed with his unfailing lantern, and as he warned the others he swept
the light on their uncertain path.

“Oh!” Ruth cried out, “I’ve lost my moccasin!”

“Moccasin!” repeated Dudley. “How could you expect to keep those
things on?”

“I didn’t expect to. I knew I’d lose them,” replied Ruth undaunted.
“I’ve got to go back to the car. This is too muddy for my poor feet.”

“All right,” Cara agreed. “You can make it and we won’t be far away.
We’ve got to get to the boy quickly.”

As a matter of fact, Babs was almost there. She had trudged on ahead,
breathless to reach the boy who, she felt, must again have met with an
accident. No boy, especially Nicky, would be in such a plight if he
had not been disabled.

“Here, over here,” the boy called again. “Can you see my light?”

“Yes, we’re coming. Hold your horses,” called back Dudley, for they
were almost up to the spot from which a bull’s eye light could be seen
through the undergrowth.

Then they found him. The poor little chap!

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” exclaimed the captain.

“I couldn’t get there with your oil, Cap,” sighed the boy. “I lost me
way, and—look at me!”

They did, all of them. Under the gleam of the captain’s light they
looked at him.

“Poor little chap!” repeated Babs. She was the first to recover her
composure sufficiently to begin at the bushes. She was trying to tear
them away from the crouched little figure.

Presently all of them, including the captain, were at those bushes,
tearing, pulling, breaking, until the tangle was cleared away.

“An’ ye tried to get me the oil, Nick,” the captain said, as he put
his big friendly hand out to the boy. “I knew you would.”

“Yeh, and I would have too, only fer me busted arm,” Nicky proclaimed
stoutly scrambling to his feet.

“You were trying to ride that old wheel, hold a heavy can of oil and
find your way in this storm,” Dudley reasoned astoundedly. “It’s a
wonder you even have your voice left,” he concluded as a big boy
would.

“’Bout all,” Captain Quiller added. “A youngster like Nicky ain’t got
no special fightin’ force to boast of, only his spirit. He’s got the
spunk, ain’t you Nick?”

“Oh, that ain’t nawthin’,” deprecated the boy, from whose clothing
Babs and Cara were still dragging bits of briars and dried sticks.
“Don’t spill the oil,” he protested, for the old bicycle was prone
against the oil can and the least movement of it might spill the
precious fluid.

“We got to hustle at that,” Captain Quiller reminded them. “I kin see
the light a-goin’ an’ the storm’s about spent. But ole Pete’ll be in a
canipshun fit. He figgered he jest about knowed I couldn’t get any oil
an’ we’d be out o’ luck then,” he admitted dryly.

“But you have got it,” Barbara said proudly. She was holding up the
can in proof.

“I’ll get the car,” Dudley said. “See, here’s a pretty good road
around the jungle. I’ll be back in a jiff.”

“What a wonderful little boy!” Cara took time now to exclaim. She was
now beginning to understand what it was that Barbara so greatly
admired in the little Italian. Captain Quiller had called it spunk.

“I’d have got there,” said Nicky stoutly, half apologizing for his
predicament, “if my light didn’t go on the blink. Fer jest a minute it
danced. An’ that was when I took this header.”

Ruth had been shouting all sorts of questions from the car but no one
had time to answer her. Now she was coming along with Dudley. As the
strong headlights of the big car caught the group standing waiting a
remarkable picture was presented.

“Oh,” squealed Ruth to Dudley. “Just look!”

There stood Cara in the white dress, which shone plainly beneath the
cape, Nicky next with his bandaged arm and tattered clothing, his
black hair making streaks on his forehead and seeming to hide so much
of his small face. On the other side of him, and insisting on holding
on to him was Babs in her college gown, and somehow still managing to
keep on her head that ridiculous mortar-board cap. Of course it was
fitting on her bobbed head pretty closely. And Captain Quiller was
actually standing just back of them, his lantern held high above their
heads. The can of oil securely held in the other hand could not be
seen but he knew it was there and he had a “strangle hold” on it.

No wonder Ruth exclaimed at the picture. It was fit for a “movie set”
with unlimited possibilities in the subtitle.

But the lighthouse tender was impatient to be off with the oil for his
lamp, and it took all of them but a few minutes to get into the car,
while Dudley then expertly drove through the uncertain roads made more
uncertain by the ravages of the heavy summer shower.

A tantalizing drizzle kept up and the night was still bitterly black,
but Nicky was safe in the car now, Captain Quiller had his oil and the
girls had had their adventure.

Babs was so glad to have been in the rescuing party.

“Whatever would you have done,” she asked Nicky, “if we had not found
you?”

“Some one would of,” the boy replied with the supreme confidence of
his years.

“But you were hurt, again,” Cara comforted. “You’ve had an awful lot
of bad luck today, Nickolas, haven’t you?”

“Not so much,” he answered. He was alive after all, and that seemed
good luck to Nicky.

“What’s hurt worst this time?” Dudley made a chance to call back.

“Nothin’,” Nicky said, as Dudley knew he would.

“But you got a spill in the ditch?”

“Sure.”

“And you couldn’t get out?”

“Nope.”

“Then what held you down?”

“Me ankle. It got twisted I guess,” Nicky reluctantly admitted.

“Does your ankle hurt?” asked Babs, solicitously.

“Not much it don’t. It’s gettin’ better.”

“But you didn’t spill my oil, son,” Captain Quiller assured him
proudly. “I knowed you wouldn’t. Ain’t never failed me yet, Nick, you
haven’t. An’ if you was older——”

“If he was older!” It was Babs who repeated the phrase. A sudden
vision swept before her. The light, the harbor light belonged to the
government. Nicky had risked his life to bring oil to the lighthouse
keeper! And Nicky so badly needed government influence, for his
father!

“Oh, Captain!” she gasped. “Isn’t Nicky really a hero?”

“Bettcher life he is!” replied the captain.

“And heroes get recognition from—from the government—don’t they?” She
could hardly speak coherently, she was so excited.

“Sometimes, sometimes,” said Captain Quiller. “But here we are, and
here’s Pete a-waitin’. Here you are Pete!” he called out lustily as
they drew up in the heavy sand to reach the lighthouse landing.
“Here’s you oil. Needin’ it bad, ain’t yer?”

“She’s jest a-flickerin’,” called back Pete. “’Bout ready to flicker
out too. Where’s your can?”

“Right here. There you be,” declared the captain, handing out the oil
can. “An’ if it hadn’t been for friend Nicky, we’d never have got it,
neither.”

But Pete had grasped the handle of the oil can and was going towards
the tower, without showing the least interest in what Captain Quiller
was saying. All he wanted was the oil and he had got that.

The lighthouse was one of those built upon land—upon a strip of land
that extended into the sea like a peninsula. On the end of this strip
a tower was built of lattice work construction, and from the top of
this tower The Light could be seen far enough out at sea to save
mariners from the sand strips that would easily ground their craft.

“No use invitin’ you in jest now, I suppose,” Captain Quiller remarked
politely, “and I suppose you’re goin’ to take young Nick home, ain’t
y’u?”

[Illustration: “I SUPPOSE YOU’RE GOIN’ TO TAKE NICK HOME, AIN’T Y’U?”
CAPTAIN QUILLER REMARKED.]

“Certainly we are,” both Cara and Babs exclaimed. Then Babs said with
a little laugh, “We’ve been taking Nicky home _all_ day, it seems to
me.”

But the boy was tugging at her arm, and she guessed why.

“Those others,” the little fellow muttered, “they came this
afternoon.”

“I know,” whispered Babs, “but it’s all right, they were just driving
around——”

“Our way?” He couldn’t believe that. His voice said so.

“We were looking for candlesticks,” Cara chimed in. “Like those you
sold to my brother.”

“I can get more,” answered Nicky brightly. Evidently the lure of
selling the trinkets was enough to restore his confidence in Babs’
friends.

“Yes,” gushed Cara, taking advantage of the opportunity to cheer him
up, and likewise to cheer Babs, “we want a lot of odd things and
perhaps you can get them for us,” she suggested happily.

“I could,” declared Nicky. And now Babs knew that he no longer blamed
her. He was just thinking of selling things and could not be thinking
of her breach of his confidence.

She wanted so much to throw her arms around him and just squeeze love
into his starved little childhood. She wanted to shout out in that
dark night that he had risked his life to get oil for the lighthouse,
she wanted to comfort that hurt little foot, even to fondle that
injured hand—oh, if only she could do all or any of this!

But instead she must sit there quietly as the car rolled along, and
perhaps Nicky would insist again on being let down “this side of the
track.”

“Whatever are you sighing for, Babs?” Ruth asked in astonishment. “Are
you sick—or something?”

“Oh no: was I sighing?”

“Yep, you was,” came so unexpectedly from little Nicky that everyone
laughed.

“That’s right, Nick,” said Dudley, “we fellows have got to stick
together. So I’ll dump the girls at home and we’ll finish our ride in
peace.”

“Sure,” agreed Nicky, and again a problem was solved.




                             CHAPTER XIII

                         CRAZY QUILTS GALORE


The party was over. It had been a delightful experience for Babs, and
despite her natural opposition to that social life to which she felt
alien, she had to admit that it “did her good.”

She admitted this at the constant reiteration of Dora, who just kept
saying that the party “done Barbara good,” until Barbara chimed in to
break the monotony.

“Put some life in her,” then Dora varied her chant, and at that Dr.
Hale took up the refrain and declared that it certainly had.

But life at the old-fashioned home did not now seem quite the same to
Barbara. Everything seemed so shabby; she scarcely felt brave enough
to invite her new friends in to see her, although their curiosity
would amply have repaid her and would easily have compensated for the
lack of luxury.

“Not just yet,” Babs replied to her father’s suggestion. “Wait until I
get things fixed up a little.”

But a new interest was now claiming the time and attention of Sea
Cosset folks. A real Old Home Week was being inaugurated, and Babs was
asked to head the girls’ committee.

“Because,” said Miss Mary-Louise Trainor, “she knows something. She
takes more books out of the library than any other girl in the place.”
Miss Trainor told the women’s committee that and so Babs had been
asked. She could not refuse; her father pointed out the fact to her,
that because the Hales were a part of the sea-coast town, and living
“over the line in Landing” did not make her exempt from obligation to
help with this affair. She was a native, one who lived there winter
and summer, and what did the summer girls know about Old Home Week
anyhow?

So Babs had reluctantly consented with reservations. She wouldn’t boss
anybody and she wouldn’t work at night. She wanted her evenings to do
as she pleased with them, and if the “show” was to hold forth of
nights the women would have to “tend it,” she pointed out, reasonably
enough.

The old Stillwell place was selected for the exhibit, as quaint an old
homestead as could be found in the entire county. Then the women’s
committee decided that all sorts of old-time handiwork would be taken
in the collection, and that meant that quilts were going to receive a
tremendous boom.

All one could hear was “quilts”; every one seemed to have a collection
of at least one, and those who didn’t own one knew just where they
could borrow one. So a quilt deluge was threatened.

Candlesticks were probably next in point of popularity, and Barbara
knew something about them. She knew that Nicky could supply a pair,
beautifully carved in new or old wood, for he had done so when Cara
offered him her patronage. Who carved them or where he got them was as
mysterious to Babs as to the other girls, and boys too, for that
matter, for Babs had insisted upon leaving the Italians to themselves.

“If we want to try their candlesticks, all right,” she said simply but
finally. “I don’t see what business it is of ours _where_ they get
them from.”

“Neither do I,” agreed Cara stoutly, “for we know very well they don’t
steal them. Who would have things like that anyway? They have simply
been made to fill our order,” she concluded sagely.

This was all settled shortly after the windup of the house party. Then
little Nicky had taken Cara’s order, and the delivery of the quaintly
carved wooden candlesticks, tinted with softly blended colors that
reminded one of the Italian painters, was made within an incredibly
short time.

Even Babs marvelled at the workmanship. It was too fine to be made by
some unskilled Italian, and when she tactfully asked Nicky who did
make them, he became so excited he could scarcely answer.

“A friend,” was all he said. Babs knew better than to press her
question. Cara declared frankly she didn’t care who made them, she was
so glad to get them.

“Even if that famous black hander whom the girls are always hinting
about, is hidden in the Marcusi shack,” she protested stoutly, “I
don’t give a rap. The candlesticks are the quaintest things I’ve ever
seen and I’ll give Nicky all the orders he’ll take for more. I want
them for Christmas presents,” declared Cara.

Cara and Babs were alone on the beach. The morning was hot and sultry
and only a few vagrant clouds gave hope of stirring up a breeze of
relief. The girls had already become chums, as Cara had intended and
perhaps as Babs had feared—because she considered herself too busy to
have a real chum. At least, she thought she felt that way about it.

But she very soon discovered what a foolish notion that was, for a
girl like Cara helped her. She did exactly what Dora said she would
do—“put some life in Barbara.”

And now that they were really companions, Babs just wondered how she
used to get along, all alone or with Glenn Gaynor. Glenn too had
changed his habits, and was having a wonderful time going around with
Dudley Burke.

“Hope it doesn’t rain,” Cara remarked as the girls made for their
bath-houses. “Because you know, Babs, this afternoon——”

“Oh, yes, I know. We’re to have a tiresome old meeting,” grumbled
Babs. “Why do old ladies so _love_ to get things up for _young_
ladies? Why can’t they manage their own old patchwork show?”

“They can, dear,” cooed Cara. “But then they’d miss the fun of making
_us_ do something. That’s their chiefest joy, you know,” she ended
laughingly.

“Yes, I know. Well, I’m only doing what I have to do because I have
to,” Babs declared, still in a grumbling mood. “Dads again, you know.”

“And Nicky,” Cara reminded her companion. “You know, Babbsy, you
_must_ show Nicky’s candlesticks.”

“No, I don’t think I will,” Babs surprised her friend by saying.
“Women aren’t like us. They would demand to know who made them, and
that would, or might,” she corrected herself, “bring trouble to
Nicky.”

“Oh, Babs!” exclaimed Cara, in real surprise. “You don’t mean to say
you wouldn’t. Not show those darling little candlesticks,” she
repeated. “Why, they would be sure to win a prize,” Cara faltered in
disappointment.

“I know they are lovely and I don’t suppose any handicraft work there
will be better done,” Babs replied. “But somehow, Cara, I know those
poor folks are trying to hide some trouble. And I’d be a queer friend
if I drew attention to it.”

“Attention—to what?”

“To the Unknown.”

“Unknown?”

“Yes. We know perfectly well that whoever makes those candlesticks is
hiding—is unknown,” Barbara admitted. “I’d love to know all about them
but it really isn’t my business, is it?” she said rather than asked.

“Do you really believe, Babs, that a mysterious person is being hidden
by—by Nicky’s mother?” Cara almost gasped.

“Yes, I do,” replied Babs decidedly.

“It couldn’t be—be their father!”

“I don’t see how he could have escaped and then hide there,” Barbara
continued, as if trying to reason the matter out. “That would be too
easy.”

“Yes, wouldn’t it?” agreed Cara. “And—the carving is really very fine.
Mother has seen much of that work. She travelled all over Europe last
year to finish up her sight-seeing, you know,” Cara made clear.

“Yes?” Babs answered abstractedly. She was not thinking of
sight-seeing or Europe either.

“And she says,” continued the enthused Cara, “that this Italian work
is really very good indeed.”

“Dad says so too. But I must hurry to dress,” Babs reminded herself.
“No matter how we feel about the old ladies’ quilting bee, I suppose
we’ve got to show up, much as we hate to.”

At this the girls separated, as their bath-houses were at different
ends of the small pavilion, but when each emerged, dressed and ready
to ride home in the small car that Cara had just obtained a license to
drive, their conversation was resumed.

“You see,” Barbara pointed out, “how dreadful it would be if anything
that we did would draw attention to this thing. I just couldn’t stand
that.”

“But how could little Nicky come to harm?” Cara wanted to know. “He
surely is innocent, and besides, isn’t something going to be done to
reward him for risking his life to get oil to the lighthouse?”

“I hope so. I have written to Washington; Dad told me how to do it.
But I suppose they get so many such letters I may never get a reply,”
said Babs, a little dispiritedly.

“I don’t see why not!” Cara never could see why any one would slight
Barbara. “I’m sure we pay enough taxes to have a secretary answer such
letters,” she fumed, indignantly.

“Oh, I suppose I’ll get a letter-form answer, maybe, the kind they
grind out of machines, you know. But it would be lovely——” Babs
stopped, made a queer face and choked back a laugh.

“A secret, eh?” surmised Cara. “Not even telling me?”

“I don’t want to seem silly, Cara, so if you don’t mind I’ll wait to
tell you _when_ I get my official answer. _When_ I do,” she repeated,
quizzically.

“Want Nicky made official messenger to the president, or something
like that?” Cara started in to guess.

“No fair guessing,” Babs checked her. “And besides, perhaps I
shouldn’t have written at all. Who am _I_, to address the Secretary of
State.”

“You are just as important as any one else, I guess,” Cara defended
promptly.

“But Captain Quiller is in the government employ, and Nicky got the
oil for _him_,” Babs reminded her.

“Yes, maybe all that’s true, but Captain Quiller doesn’t love Nicky as
you do.”

“He does, really Cara. He came over to see Dad right after it all
happened, and what he didn’t say in praise of Nicky merely stuck in
his throat. He just raved about him.”

“Then why don’t you take a chance to show off his candlesticks and get
the women raving too?”

“Oh, women!” deplored Babs. “They want to know everything. I wouldn’t
wonder but they would go right down among the Italians and offer to
give them lessons in making macaroni. They couldn’t imagine the
foreign women knowing anything, I suppose. No Cara, please don’t say
anything about it. I’ll have to wait and see how things turn out. I
can’t, just can’t take a chance on hurting poor little Nicky and
Vicky.”

“All right, girl,” Cara answered gaily. “Here you are,” and she pulled
up expertly to the side steps of Babs’ old homestead. “See you later.
I’ll call——”

“Dad will be driving out, thanks Cara,” Barbara interrupted her in her
offer. “We have to go out in the family car once in a while you know,
or folks might think we pawned it,” she finished, trying to joke about
the old car that Dr. Hale drove around in. It went, and that was all
that he could ask of any car, according to him.

Later that day these same two girls entered enthusiastically into the
plans for the exhibit. No one could have guessed they were not “heart
and soul with the project” which was the way Miss Mary-Louise Trainor
said every one ought to be for establishing a Community House.

“Might as well have some fun out of it,” Cara told Barbara.

“Might better,” Barbara agreed with Cara.

“But the crazy quilts; are we supposed to go crazy over them? Aren’t
they hideous?”

“We’re apt to go crazy over them,” Barbara continued in the same
bantering strain. “Ought to call this a Crazy Show.”

“Judging from the way some of the women are acting,” Cara whispered,
for the girls were busy sorting the goods arriving, “we’ll be lucky if
it doesn’t turn out to be a prize-fight.”

“That would be fun; let us hope for it. I heard Mrs. Trout tell Mrs.
Clayton that her quilt would have to be shown on the old table over
there.”

“And that’s the family table of the Brownell’s, older than Age itself,
I believe,” Cara continued to whisper. “I doubt if they’ll allow any
quilt upon its sacred surface.”

“That’s why we may hope for a prize-fight,” said Barbara, hurrying to
the door to take from the hands of Mrs. Mary Ann Smalley a glass case
of utterly impossible wax flowers.

A flock of girls, all on the girls’ committee, and expected to work
under the directions of Cara and Barbara, arrived just in time.

“We don’t dare put the wax flowers on the floor,” said Cara to Esther,
“but where can we put them?”

“Better get a carpenter to make a long table for us——”

“My flowers must have a proper setting,” Mrs. Mary Ann Smalley
interrupted Cara. “That table over there——”

“That’s the famous Brownell table,” Cara said, smiling that this one
table with its elaborate carvings should be in such great demand.

“Well, I don’t care whose it is, it’s just made for my wax flowers,”
insisted the excited exhibitor, just as Mrs. Nathaniel Brownell
herself fluttered in.

Then, as Babs put it, the fight was on.




                             CHAPTER XIV

                         A HONEYSUCKLE SECRET


“I don’t see why not,” panted Mrs. Smalley to Mrs. Brownell. She was
holding in her trembling hands the huge glass case of waxed passion
flowers, and every time the case shook even a little in her trembling
hands, the flowers would shed a few hunks of wax. It was so very old,
you see, and wax is wax.

“The reason why I don’t wish anything placed upon _our_ table,”
replied the elegant Mrs. Brownell, using all her social powers in an
effort to appear polite, “is because of the exquisite grain of the
wood. Just look at that,” she begged the excited Mrs. Smalley.

“Yes, I see,” said Mrs. Smalley blindly, for she couldn’t have seen
over that glass case, and besides, she wasn’t looking that way. “But
they are both of the same period,” she pointed out as if she knew.

“Same period!” gasped Mrs. Brownell. “Why!” She pronounced that “why”
as if it were composed of two syllables—“why-eeh!” And then she could
hardly speak from sheer disdain. “Our table,” she continued to orate,
“is of the very early American period, but you know, _dear_ Mrs.
Smalley, wax flowers are not even classified.”

“What did I tell you?” said Babs to Cara. “Here’s the fight we were
hoping for, right upon our heads. Ruth,” she called ever so lightly,
for Ruth was actually staring at the women with unhidden glee. “Ruth,
will you please—do something!”

“What,” drawled Ruth, her mouth staying open as if she hated to miss
anything by closing it. “What can I do, Babs?” she finally managed to
ask, still watching the women.

“You can grab a few things from the ladies as they enter,” Babs
suggested. She too was having a good time, for the table-wax-flower
dispute was still going strong.

“They’re actually taking sides,” Cara chuckled. “There are three with
Mrs. Smalley and four with Mrs. Brownell. Babs, you can’t expect us to
work while this is going on.”

“I don’t, I know better. But here comes another glass case. Looks like
somebody’s dead head of hair tangled up into snarls they call
flowers.”

“Dead head of hair!” gasped Louise.

“Yes. Don’t you know they used to make flowers out of the hair of the
dear, dead departed?” Babs continued, chuckling.

“Horrors!” exclaimed Louise.

“Exactly. And this is going to be a horrible show. Oh, Mrs.
Dickerson,” Babs chirped gaily to the latest arrival in the glass case
department, “what a perfectly beautiful case of flowers!” and she
clasped her hands ecstatically. “Do give it to Esther to place for
you. Here, Esther,” and the happy lady with the monstrosity turned
beamingly upon Esther. So _that_ glass case changed hands promptly.

“You girls are so—so smart,” whined little Mrs. Dickerson, “to take
hold so, so fine.” She had a lot of trouble with her adjectives. “We
knowed you would. That’s why we picked out Barbara Hale. She’s so, so
smart,” declared the flustered lady, casting fond glances upon Esther
who was almost petrified with her task of “placing” the hair flowers
somewhere “to advantage.”

“How’s the fight coming along?” Cara sidled up to ask Babs.

“Mrs. Brownell _may_ have her table removed if the chairman doesn’t
soon arrive. It seems a table is a table, and folks are bound to set
things on it,” said Babs, almost laughing outright at the absurdity of
the situation.

“Cricky!” exclaimed Cara, using her father’s favorite expletive, “what
on earth is this coming?”

“Looks like a portable bath-tub,” replied Babs as Mrs. Ricketts, the
fattest woman one could possibly imagine being able to carry anything
except fat, puffed up the steps, her arms encircling like a balloon
auto tire, a great, big dish.

“My tureen,” she exhaled. “Nothing like this in your collection, I’ll
say. It’s been in our family for more than one hundred years. Where
can I set it down? It’s awfully heavy!”

“Yes, it must be,” readily agreed Ruth, who was in line to accept the
big dish. “I wonder where we can put it.”

“On that table. Just the place. It will show off beautifully there.
Set it right down——”

“But I’m afraid we can’t, Mrs. Ricketts,” Cara just caught her.
“That’s Mrs. Brownell’s table and she wants it left clear to show the
grain of the wood.”

“Grain of the wood!” repeated the stout lady deridingly. “As if a big
table like that could take up room with nothing on it. Here, I’ll put
my tureen on it, and if Mrs. Brownell——”

“Yes?” The little word came from Mrs. Brownell’s lips. “Your dish is
really antique. What a pity it is cracked,” and she adjusted her
silver-framed glasses to see the crack more clearly.

“Cracked!” Mrs. Ricketts wore no glasses but she had very penetrating
eyes, and she fairly glared at her old soup tureen as she repeated
Mrs. Brownell’s charge against it. “It is no such thing—cracked!”

“Aren’t these cracks?” Nothing could ruffle the magnificent Mrs.
Brownell. She had poise.

“No. They are merely tissue scratches. We had an opinion——”

But the argument was lost on the girls. They didn’t care a whoopee
about tissue scratches, or cracks on ugly old soup tureens. What they
were interested in was the fight, according to Cara.

“And I’ll bet the table wins,” she told Esther. “It’s quite a table,
isn’t it?”

“Quite a soup tureen, too,” replied Esther, “and Mrs. Ricketts is
bigger than Mrs. Brownell.”

It was fun, after all, to be on the girls’ committee, for not only
were the exhibits the queerest old things imaginable, but the women
who brought the articles were queer, and if not always old, at least
not _very_ young.

And they took so much pride in the heirlooms that the Home Exhibit
afforded them a rare treat, indeed. Mrs. Brownell’s table and Mrs.
Rickett’s soup tureen were merely samples of the goods contributed,
but it was the needlework and the quilts that formed the bulk and real
problem of the exhibit.

“Where’ll I hang this?” Louise would call out, holding up as much as
she could manage of a red and white log-cabin quilt.

Then the owner would start in giving orders. She would want it hung
“just so” over the balustrade.

“But the silk quilts and handwoven portieres are to hang over the
balustrade,” Miss Trainor would insist. “Mrs. Winters arranged all
that.” Mrs. Winters was general chairman and certainly should have
been on hand on this afternoon; but she wasn’t.

“These tidies,” pleaded quiet little Lida, quite helplessly, “where
can we show the tidies?”

“We’ve simply got to have a special place for the small handwork,”
Cara said sensibly. “We’ll drown in tidies and center-pieces if we
don’t. Dad would send a carpenter over to fix up a nice rack, with
hooks that couldn’t tear. Where’s Babs?”

“Yes, where is Babs?” joined in a number of the girls, for Barbara
being chairman of the girls’ committee, and the girls being in charge
of all the ladder climbing and the dusting of the old nooks and
cobwebby corners—to say nothing of taking the goods from the loving
hands of the lenders—they certainly expected Barbara to be around all
the time and in every place at once.

But just now she could not be found. The Stillwell House on the ocean
front, chosen as the most suitable and convenient place to hold the
summer exhibit, contained plenty of rooms and was built like a
farm-house, with the entire first-floor rooms connecting by wide
doorways and passages. The house had not been used as a summer home
for a number of years, and those of the pretty little colony who
understood values, considered the quaint place as a possible public
library and Community Center for Sea Cosset.

Miss Mary-Louise Trainor had planned the Home Exhibit mainly to
interest people in such a plan, and she knew perfectly well that one
of the best ways of obtaining real publicity for a scheme is to have a
girls’ committee work on it. The girls will talk, they will tell
everybody everything interesting, and if it was a wonderful old place,
which the Stillwell place really was, the girls could be depended upon
to let everybody know it.

“But where’s Babs?” Louise asked impatiently. “I just don’t know what
to do with this pewter teapot.”

“She won’t know either,” pointed out Ruth. “Stick it over on the
spinet.”

“And have my head taken off by Miss Douglass. That’s her spinet,”
declared Louise.

“Now Cara has disappeared,” groaned Ruth. “Let’s go and see what’s
going on. I know they went out on the back porch.” She was whispering
this. “Let’s sneak out and surprise them.”

But Louise and Ruth could not sneak out and leave Esther and Lida
alone to battle with the exhibits. So they turned to help Lida while
Cara and Babs were still lost to the work and workers of the room.

The back porch of the old house was entirely screened in with high
sweet-fern bushes, that one growing green that thrives on sandy soil
and in a salty atmosphere. So thick were these bushes that the porch
was almost dark behind them, and when Cara tiptoed out she was easily
able to reach the little square extension, and hide there without
being seen.

“Some one is with her!” Cara was almost saying, for Babs was talking
earnestly to some one at the other end of the porch.

“A boy! And he’s crying!” Cara crouched down guiltily for she felt she
was seeing and listening to something very, very secret.

Babs spoke, but the boy sobbed. He was actually crying, and that was a
remarkable thing for Nicky to do.

Cara could see it was Nicky who was with Babs, although the boy’s form
was almost entirely shrouded in the heavy vines that clambered all
over the end of the porch.

Then a child’s voice, heavy with sobs, called out too loud to be
unheard by any one on that porch.

“But I’ve got to. I tell you we must have it. I’ve got to——”

“Hush!” checked Babs. “They’ll hear you. Don’t worry, Nicky, it will
be all right. You can trust us, can’t you?”

“Yes, I can trust you,” came the reluctant answer.

“And no one will know you came,” said Babs very softly, but her voice
was perfectly distinct to the other girl in her uncomfortable hiding
place.

“I’ve got to get back,” Cara told herself. “I must not let them know I
was here.” She just slipped quietly over the rail, between the big
bushes, and when Babs, her face strangely flushed, came back to her
tasks at the show-room, Cara was just folding up another quilt and
forcing little squeaks of pretended admiration, so that Mrs. Baker
would be pleased.

But what was the matter with Nicky?

What was he and Babs hiding?

Why was that brave little fellow sobbing so heavily?

A queer sort of secret for girls, this seemed to be, but Cara could
not possibly disclose her part in it, and she knew perfectly well that
Babs was not likely to say anything about hers.




                              CHAPTER XV

                           THE SANTA MARIA


That incident, simple as it seemed to be, immediately cast its spell
over the two girls. Barbara was so upset by it, whatever it was, that
she could hardly keep her mind on the quilts and tidies. Cara simply
sat down in one of the big rockers—it was there for exhibition
purposes only—and she declared she wasn’t going to do another thing.
Louise and Ruth were so curious they didn’t know what they were doing,
so that the girls’ committee became suddenly very inefficient.

“It’s too late to do anything else anyhow,” Cara declared. “Let’s go
home.”

To this all gladly agreed, all but Barbara. She insisted upon staying
until her father called for her, but her real motive was to fix things
up quietly when her willing but excited companions had gone. Every one
wanted to help, but so many around merely lent confusion, and, as
chairman, Barbara felt a certain responsibility.

So it happened she was still waiting and all alone when Miss Davis—the
twin Miss Davis—came along trying to hide something beneath the folds
of her old-fashioned black cape.

“I brought it in spite of her,” she confided to Barbara. “Sister
Tillie is such a crank. But I was determined to show it.”

“Yes?” replied Barbara questioningly.

“Our great-grandfather made it,” she went on, meanwhile bringing forth
from its hiding place a small wooden ship model.

“Yes, it is lovely. And it’s priceless. It’s a model that was made in
a war prison, and we have had all sorts of offers to sell it, but, of
course, we would never part with it. You see, I’m so proud of it I
just couldn’t miss the chance to show it off.”

[Illustration: “YES, IT IS LOVELY, AND IT’S PRICELESS.”]

“I don’t blame you,” said Babs, still gazing with spellbound
admiration at the little model. It was quite small but perfect in
every detail.

“But Tillie is different. We’re twins, you know,” confessed little
Miss Davis, “but never were two sisters more unlike. We never agree on
anything. Where can we put the model so that it will be sure to be
safe?”

“That’s a serious question,” answered Babs. “I wish all the ladies
hadn’t gone. Some of them should have taken charge of this.”

“I’d trust your judgment further than I would theirs,” said Miss Davis
generously. They had placed the model on the little spinet and it
looked splendidly there.

“You see, Tillie wouldn’t agree that I should fetch it, but it’s as
much mine as hers, and I was determined to get it here. As a matter of
fact, she doesn’t know I did bring it,” confessed Miss Isabel Davis
the other twin.

“Then, aren’t you afraid it will make trouble between you?” Barbara
suggested.

“No doubt of it. But I don’t care about that,” Miss Davis insisted.
“If I gave in in everything where’d I be? Now, let’s see where we
could hide this. I wouldn’t dare to leave it on that spinet over
night.”

“We’re going to have a watchman after dark,” Barbara informed little
Miss Davis. “That is, the man in the next cottage has agreed to watch
for us after he brings in his fish nets. He’s a fisherman, you know.”

“I’ve heard one did take that old place, but he’s a stranger around
here, isn’t he?”

“The ladies seem to know him. They’ve bought fish from him and say
he’s very reliable,” Barbara answered. “But I must hurry. Father will
be here for me soon. Where will we hide the little galleon?”

“I’ve been looking around——”

“Here!” she exclaimed. “There’s a little cubby-hole built in the
bricks back of this Dutch oven. It ought to be safe there.”

“Yes. That’s fine. You put it in. It will surely be safe there,”
agreed Miss Davis, only too gladly.

Barbara picked the model up carefully and carried it over to the
hearth. Then she turned on the little electric candle light that
spread a soft glow over the dark bricks, opened the door of the closet
and still more carefully set the war-time trophy within. Neither she
nor Miss Davis spoke while all this was going on, for somehow she felt
the importance of secrecy.

Then, just as Barbara turned to switch off the light, they both heard
a noise.

“Some one at the window!” gasped Miss Davis.

“Yes, I heard some one,” admitted Barbara, “and it couldn’t have been
Dad.”

But Miss Davis was at the door before Barbara had finished.

“There he goes,” she exclaimed. “And he’s that little Italian boy. The
one whose father is in prison. Do you suppose he saw us?”

“Yes, that’s Nicky,” added Barbara, for she too was at the door and
she could see little Nicky scampering along the sandy beach in full
sight. “We don’t need to worry about him. He’s perfectly honest.”

“Land sakes, I hope so,” sighed Miss Davis. “For if anything happened
to the _Santa Maria_ I might as well never go back home. I couldn’t
live a day under the roof with Tillie. She’s so fond of it. Perhaps,
after all, I did wrong to fetch it,” she appeared to relent.

“If you feel that way about it you can come and get it again
tomorrow,” suggested Babs, quite weary of the whole affair. “But I’m
sure it would be lovely to have it in the exhibit. You know, the idea
is to get materials that may be used in a little museum here
eventually,” she explained.

“That’s just what I thought. And the _Santa Maria_ belongs in a
museum,” declared Miss Davis. “It’s perfectly foolish to have it
locked up in our old cabinet. Yes, I’ll leave it and talk it over with
Tillie. She’s as changeable as the wind, and perhaps I can talk her
around. There’s that boy stopping at the fisherman’s place,” she
interrupted herself. “He must know him.”

“Very likely, for Nicky knows the lighthouse keeper and others around
here. He’s a busy little fellow and runs errands, you know,” concluded
Barbara. “Well, here’s Dad. I just have to lock this door—everything
else is locked. Won’t you ride out with us, Miss Davis?” she invited
the small woman who was really very agreeable, and eager to help
Barbara with the locking up or anything else left to be done.

“I’d be glad to, for I am tired,” admitted Miss Davis. “You see, I had
to wait so late to get rid of Tillie. She was going in town all
afternoon but I thought she’d never get started.”

Dr. Hale was waiting now, and it took but a few minutes for Babs and
Miss Davis to climb into the car.

“Everything all right, daughter?” he asked solicitously, after
greeting the guest.

“Oh, yes, Dads, all right,” Barbara replied a little wearily. “Miss
Davis and I have a secret, something really wonderful to exhibit and
we had quite a time hiding it,” she told her father briefly.

He laughed at that. “I don’t imagine the pirates will come ashore
tonight,” he joked. “It is too beautifully clear for their black
deeds, so I guess your treasure will be safe,” he ended pleasantly.

“Oh, there’s little Nicky, Dads,” Barbara exclaimed, as Nicky did
emerge from behind some boxes that were piled at the side of the
fisherman’s cottage. “I must speak to him.”

Dr. Hale pulled his car up as short as his brakes allowed, and Nicky
stood for a few moments as if waiting for them to reach him. Then,
suddenly and without a cause which could be thought of by Barbara, he
turned, ducked behind the boxes again and was as completely out of
sight as if they had never seen him.

“I wonder what he did that for?” Babs exclaimed in astonishment.

“He didn’t want to see you, evidently,” replied Dr. Hale, throwing his
car into gear again.

“Those youngsters can’t be depended upon,” said Miss Davis sagely.
“They have no one to teach them anything so they pick up what is
wrong.”

“Not Nicky,” defended Barbara. “He’s a fine little fellow.”

“Do you know him so well?” queried the woman, in surprise.

“Yes, I do,” stoutly declared Barbara. “And I know him to be—just
splendid,” she finished, after an agitated pause.

“You see, Miss Davis,” said Dr. Hale politely, “my daughter is
something of a philanthropist. She is always doing something for the
neglected ones,” and he continued to talk in that strain for some
minutes. But Barbara was not hearing a word he said.

She was wondering what was the matter with Nicky. Long before Miss
Davis spoke of hearing a noise around the Community House, Barbara had
caught a glimpse of Nicky. He was evidently trying to find out whom
she was talking to, and he must have seen both her and Miss Davis with
the little model craft, and also he must have seen where they hid it.

“But that couldn’t make any difference,” Barbara told herself, for she
would even have trusted Nicky to do the hiding if he had been there,
in the long old-fashioned room when she pried open the cupboard door.

“And so you and Miss Davis have a state secret,” the doctor
interrupted her thoughts, as he pulled up to the porch of Miss Davis’
cottage.

“Yes,” said Barbara simply. She couldn’t seem to find her tongue, as
Dora might have said.

“Don’t talk about secrets around here,” whispered Miss Davis, for her
sister Tillie was just then coming to the door to see who might be
arriving.

On the way home the doctor noticed Babs’ distraction.

“Anything go wrong with the show, girlie?” he asked gaily.

“Oh, no, why?” evaded Babs.

“You seem to have an awful lot on your mind for the first day,”
replied her father.

“I have,” admitted Babs, still inattentive.

“I hope you are not going to have worries about the thing,” he said
more decidedly, for none knew better than he that only worry could
bring that blank look to his daughter’s face.

“Indeed I am not,” declared Barbara, now beginning to see what he
meant. “We had a lot of fun. You should see some of the junk the
ladies brought in and fought over.”

“Fought over?”

“Yes, where the stuff should be put, you know. Mrs. Brownell brought
or had sent a really fine old table and it seemed as if everybody
wanted her particular article put on that table.” This was quite a
satisfactory speech for Babs under the circumstances.

“I can imagine what a fuss a lot of women would make over heirlooms,”
the doctor commented. “What are we entering?”

“Why, what could we enter?” Babs repeated in surprise. “What heirlooms
have we?”

“Take a look in the attic tomorrow,” her father replied laconically.
“You may find something worth while.” Dr. Hale was being reflective.
He seemed to know about the attic.

“All right Dads, I will,” Barbara agreed brightly. “It would be nice
for us to have something to show. You have lived here longer than most
of the _new_ people,” she pointed out as they left the car in the
garage and together walked up to their house.

“We have lived here for some time, Babs,” her father said rather
solemnly. “But I just wonder if this place isn’t a little too big for
just you and me?”

“Dads!”

“Oh, I don’t mean this year,” he hurried to reassure her, “but—well,
don’t let’s think about it, Bobolink,” and he threw his arm fondly
around her. “Think about your funny old ladies and their funny old
home week,” he counselled, anxious to divert her attention.

But Babs couldn’t think about those things at all.




                             CHAPTER XVI

                       WHEN A GIRL THINKS HARD


She just couldn’t get Nicky off her mind. Even the fun of sorting out
the old heirlooms was not enough to blot out her anxiety.

“I believe now,” she admitted, “that it isn’t the best thing for a
girl to get too interested in strangers: we can never understand them,
especially those of other nationalities.”

But Nicky was so interesting, and he seemed to be so abused. It was
this instinct of sympathy, so natural to all generous girls, that was
leading Barbara into tangled paths.

First, she had bought the old candlesticks, then Dudley Burke bought a
pair. That was on the day that Nicky hurt his hand and all the other
suspicious things happened, none of which had yet been explained.

But it was the fancy wood carving on the book-ends that Cara bought
that excited the most interest. The wood had been freshly carved, but
by whom? Who could be the artist and where was he hidden and why?

Barbara never suspected Nicky of any trickery, however, and she had
maintained perfect confidence in him until now. Now she too was being
forced to question. What did he mean by that plea for money made to
her this very afternoon? Why did he need five dollars so urgently? And
if he did need it, why could he not tell her what it was needed for?

She didn’t like the little boy sneaking around after her, and sneaking
was the only word applicable to his peculiar methods. Even generous
Cara was warning her these days that you can’t trust strangers too
far, especially those clever little boys.

The happenings of that afternoon were vividly pictured now to Barbara,
while she sat in her room, pondering. It was evening again, and with
quiet hours spread out before her a perfect race of happenings dashed
in and out of her perturbed mind.

Nicky, always Nicky, but why?

“Of course I’ve never had a sister or a brother,” she reasoned, “and
perhaps I’ve needed one. And Nicky is so interesting and so sort of
mysterious.”

But when he climbed over the rail of the back porch at the Community
House that afternoon, and managed, as only he could manage, to get
Babs’ attention, she was bothered. She didn’t want the girls to know
about that, and of course she did not know that Cara had overheard
anything. It was better for her that she did not, for that would have
added greatly to her anxieties.

It had all happened so quickly. He came back after she explained to
him why she could not exhibit the lovely candlesticks, and naturally,
he was heart-broken about that. But she insisted he would have to tell
who carved them if she put them in the show-room. He protested he
could not do that, no, never, not for anything, and so he had gone
away a very sorrowful little boy, taking back the precious pair of
candlesticks in the home-made oilcloth covering.

And the queerest part of it was he insisted they could not be sold, as
much as he and his folks needed money, he couldn’t sell those
candlesticks. They were beautifully carved and beautifully tinted, but
Barbara was too anxious to get rid of Nicky to examine them very
closely.

He came back a little later and begged that she would give him five
dollars. He said he simply had to have it, and strange to say he was
so excited he could not keep his voice down. It was then that Cara
overheard him sobbing and pleading, and it was then that Barbara tried
to scold and reason with him.

Why should he bother her so? Hadn’t she done all she could for him?
And from whom would or could she borrow five dollars at a few moments’
notice?

“But you’re my friend, ain’t you?” he pointed out reasonably enough,
“and I’ve got to have it.”

“Have you no other friends?” Barbara had asked him then.

“Sure,” was Nicky’s reply. “But I did borrow from them.”

“Do you borrow—a lot?”

“Have to,” Nicky had replied easily. “But I’m goin’-a pay it back
soon. I kin work soon, Captain Quiller says he’ll give me a job.”

“Captain Quiller?”

There had not been time there on the porch to recall Captain Quiller’s
interest in Nicky, but Barbara vividly remembered that night in the
storm, when the little boy had fallen by the roadside from his
broken-down “bike,” with that precious can of oil propped up against a
mudhill so that it couldn’t spill.

“And Nicky deserves recognition for that,” Barbara was now telling
herself. “I do wish I would get an answer to my letter from
Washington.”

Conflicting thoughts! First worry about the little Italian boy, then a
secret rejoicing in his bravery. Barbara didn’t realize that this was
unusual for a girl of her years, that most girls would not have given
a second thought to these matters. But she _was_ different, she had
been trained, or had trained herself, to think seriously, and so she
was but following her natural bent. She wasn’t old-fashioned, she was
simply wise.

Meanwhile the other girls were being frankly suspicious. Nothing could
persuade them that a criminal of some sort wasn’t being hidden in the
little shack that served to shelter Nicky’s family. That was, perhaps,
natural enough, when every one knew that the gate-keeper, Marcusi, had
been put in jail, and the girls had seen, with their own eyes, how
wildly excited those within the house acted when strangers approached.

Then this fine wood carving; who was doing that and why wouldn’t Nicky
tell?

Only the feeling of loyalty to Barbara kept the other girls subdued in
expressing _their_ opinions. She wouldn’t tolerate a word against
Nicky, and so they talked secretly, only.

But they watched, with keen interest, the course of events.

“I can’t see what she finds worth bothering with in those Italians,”
would likely be Louise’s answer.

Barbara’s attitude was defiant. She would have nothing said about
Nicky. Cara alone dared to suggest to her that one just can’t
understand strange children. But even Cara could not deter her. Nor
could her father, no, not even the bossy Dora, who had no business to
order Barbara to give up her interest in “those youngsters.”

But this afternoon something had happened that had influenced Barbara.
Nicky had run away from her. He must have seen her wave to him to come
up to the car, when Dr. Hale was driving her and Miss Davis home, and
he had scurried off behind those old boxes like a—like a—no, Babs
wouldn’t say it; she wouldn’t even think it. Nicky must have had some
good reason for that suspicious act.

Tonight she tried to read; there was her favorite magazine that had
just come by mail, but she could find nothing to interest her in its
usually fascinating pages.

“If I had had a little brother,” she was thinking, “I should have
liked his eyes to be like Nicky’s. They’re such an agate brown, like
my best marbles,” she concluded.

That gave her a new idea. Where was that bag of marbles? She had
always kept them, loved to count them and shoot them on the old
braided rug that Dora insisted was best in front of Barbara’s bed.

As the idea came to her she jumped up and she rummaged in the drawer
of her stand, where her things least in use were stored, and after
going to the very bottom several times she unearthed the little
gingham bag. The marbles in it seemed to caress her fingers as she
held them even through the gingham cover; she had always loved to play
marbles.

Down on the rug she squatted again and set the agates on the faded
blue line. Then, just as she used to do when she was ten years old,
and even as young as six years old, she began to play.

Knock! Knock! she hit the brown “real.”

It flew off the rug and rolled boldly over the wood floor but Babs
didn’t go after it. She picked another shooter from the little pool of
marbles she had spilled out and took aim at a little brown “migg.”

“Now Miggsy,” she said aloud, for no one could have heard her, “I’ve
got to get you.”

But her aim was not true and the “migg” never moved.

She tried again and hit the pretty blue “glassy.” Squatting back
against her heels Barbara laughed merrily.

“Just like Nicky,” she was thinking. “Little and brown and defiant.
That’s the reason he’s so interesting,” and she took another shot at
the migg.

Over the floor rolled noisily a number of the agates, but the smallest
one of all still escaped, that is, it took but a few turns and still
stuck to the rug.

“Guess I’ve forgotten how to shoot,” Barbara concluded, gathering up
the marbles and dropping them one by one into the bag. “I’ll give
these to Nicky.”

The jangling of the telephone disturbed her. She hurried down stairs
to answer the call.

“Yes, this is Babs. Hello Cara! What’s the excitement?” was what she
said into the transmitter.

After a very brief pause Babs’ voice was heard answering again.

“I couldn’t go up again tonight. No, I didn’t know they were going to
do anything tonight. Well, I’m glad you were there to represent us. I
got enough of it this afternoon.” Babs again.

It was Cara talking, of course, and she had told Babs that she had
just been down to the Community House. That some of the ladies went
down to fix things up, and when Cara and Dorothy Blair, one of the
older girls, were passing and saw the lights, they went in.

“And say, Babs,” Cara began again over the wire, in that way that
means something particular is going to be disclosed. “If I were you
I’d tell Nicky not to come around there any more. You know how fussy
those old ladies are about the family junk.”

“Oh yes, I know,” Babs readily agreed, and her toes working nervously
up and down in her slippers didn’t show over the telephone, of course.

“Not that _he_ isn’t all right,” continued Cara, thoughtfully, “but
just because he’s a small boy, you know.”

“I don’t want him to come around,” Babs quietly declared. “There are
too many little things there, and if anything gets mislaid the women
would be sure to blame it on the boys.”

“Coming down early in the morning?” Cara asked next.

“I suppose I’ll have to,” Babs answered. “We’ll be expected to do
everything from polishing furniture to darning Civil War socks, I
suppose,” she added laughing lightly.

“I’ll call for you about nine, shall I?” Cara asked.

“I’ll be ready, and thanks, Cara, for calling.”

“Anything happen after we left?” pursued Cara just to keep the wire
busy.

“No, that is not anything much.” The secret of Miss Davis’ ship model
could not be told over the phone, Babs had promptly decided. And
because of its importance and Miss Davis’ indecision concerning the
real displaying of the model, Babs felt the least said about it to any
one, the better. And that meant that she wouldn’t say anything about
it to any one.

So the girls talked a few minutes longer, and then reluctantly hung up
their respective receivers.

Cara always cheered Babs up. She had a way of dispelling the little
fears that would unconsciously steal in upon the other girl, and the
very sound of her laughing voice, the very indifferent, easy way in
which she so naturally pointed out that Nicky Marcusi shouldn’t be
seen around the Community House, unless he was with some one who might
later come in to see the exhibit, sort of broke up Babs’ unaccountable
fit of anxiety.

“I won’t have any little boys running around there while I’m in
charge,” she decided as she again reached her own room and prepared
for bed. “There’s no telling what youngsters might do and just think
it smart.”

But Nicky so seldom had any boys with him, or he was so seldom with
other boys that this newest argument didn’t seem quite sincere.

“And besides that,” Babs was thinking not exactly out loud but loud
enough for her own secret use, “I’m not going to take any more
responsibility there. It’s the women’s affair and they must manage it.
I feel as if I had done enough already with their old moth-eaten
delaine quilts,” and she took her bag of marbles from the center of
her bed where she had dropped them when the telephone rang, and after
tossing them up a few times to catch them like a bean bag, she finally
settled down to read the despised magazine.




                             CHAPTER XVII

                               THE LOSS


Barbara couldn’t believe it; Miss Davis’ model was gone! Stolen from
the Dutch oven and no one had seen them hide it there. That is, no one
but Nicky.

It was not yet nine o’clock next morning when Miss Davis came around
and told Barbara. She had decided not to oppose her sister and went
out to the Community House to get the family heirloom: and it was
gone!

Early as it was some of the ladies were already there, and she made
straight for the oven without telling them what she was going for.

“I almost fainted,” she told Barbara, not being far from a faint even
then, “when I opened that cubby-hole door and saw the place empty I
just screamed.”

“Gone!” Barbara repeated incredulously. “Who could have found it?”

“Well, you know,” sobbed Miss Davis, “there were youngsters watching
in that window, and we’ve got to find that Italian boy right away,
before he has a chance to sell it.”

“You mean Nickolas Marcusi?”

“I mean that little fellow who shot out in the road before us and then
scurried off like a rat,” replied the woman bitterly. “Mean to say
that wasn’t a guilty thing to do?”

“I couldn’t think that boy guilty of doing anything dishonorable,”
Barbara retorted, “I’ve known him to be too fine a little fellow.”

“Fine little fellows can fool you, my girl,” snapped the woman who was
still fanning herself with her hat although the morning was
delightfully cool. “Sometimes they think it’s fun to be brave, and
they think it smart to be able to steal things.”

“Nicky wouldn’t steal anything,” wailed Barbara. She never cried; but
if she had been given to tears they would have flooded her eyes then.
To call Nicky a thief!

“Well, come along and let’s see if we can find him,” ordered Miss
Davis, for her tone was too emphatic to be otherwise termed. “No
telling what a boy might do with a boat like that. He might put it on
a string in the ocean. Oh, mercy me! What an unlucky woman I am? Why
did I go against Tillie?” She sobbed again, and there was no denying
the genuineness of her grief.

Dr. Hale was out and Dora seemed out of reach, which was fortunate for
Barbara. She would not have had them hear of her trouble for anything.

“I’ll be ready in a minute, Miss Davis,” she told her caller. “We’ll
go over to the pavilion and I’ll phone Cara Burke. She’ll drive me out
to where the Italians live, but there really isn’t any use of your
coming. It’s an awful place to go.” She didn’t want Miss Davis to go.
She felt her presence would have hindered her greatly in her search
for Nicky.

“But _I_ must go,” insisted the woman. “I wouldn’t wait any place, I’m
too nervous,” and she almost pulled the brim off her hat in an attempt
to get it on her head. “Yes, I’ll go right along. I’ve got to keep
moving. You’ve no idea what it means to me. Why, we were offered a
pile of money for that little model, but, of course, we wouldn’t think
of selling it. Oh, dear,” and she jabbed her handkerchief against her
cheek, “why ever did I do such a thing! Pride, just foolish pride.
Wanted to show it off. Well, this is what I get for it.”

She talked and talked, and Barbara was almost as nervous as was the
woman herself. If her father should come back he would have to hear
all the story, and if Dora came back she would listen to every word
that she could catch.

“Come on, Miss Davis,” said Barbara, squatting her little felt hat on
her head without even knowing she was doing it. “Of course I’m awfully
sorry, terribly. But still, I can’t feel it is my fault; I just
followed your advice you know, and it was my idea that you shouldn’t
have left the model there.”

“Oh, I know it. Don’t make me feel worse——”

“I don’t want you to feel any worse, you know that, Miss Davis,”
Barbara interrupted, for indeed she was very sorry enough for the
poor, distressed little lady. “I merely want it to be understood that
I didn’t and couldn’t take the responsibility of any goods left there.
We girls are only supposed to do the things that the ladies tell us to
do. You see, we are merely a sub-committee.”

“But, thank goodness, you were there and that I didn’t confide in any
of the women,” exclaimed Miss Davis. “If I had told that to a single
woman, Tillie would be dying of grief now. Women can’t keep anything
to themselves,” she declared a little surprisingly, under the
circumstances.

“Don’t you suppose your sister will miss it from the cabinet?”

“No, not for this week, because she left for Blueberry Corners this
very morning. That’s the only comfort. If I’ll only be able to get it
back before _she_ gets back. Do hurry, dear. I don’t know what I’m
saying I’m so upset. I hope I wasn’t cross to you?”

“Oh, no, not at all, Miss Davis,” Babs assured her. “I can easily
understand how you feel. And I feel dreadfully about it too. Somehow I
couldn’t sleep last night and I didn’t know why. Come along, I’m
ready,” and they went off, Babs dropping a note on her father’s desk
as she went.

Cara met them before they reached the corner. The original plan was to
have Cara call at the house, but because of Miss Davis’ excited state
of mind, and the constant danger of Dora overhearing her, Babs had
hurried out before the appointed time. She knew she would meet Cara
before she turned into Landing.

“Hop right in,” was Cara’s cheerful greeting. Then she paused to give
Babs a chance to introduce the stranger.

“And if you don’t mind, Cara,” Babs continued after the brief
introduction, “we’ll drive out to the Italian settlement. We want to
see Nicky.”

“Nicky!” Cara’s tone was in dispute. She meant to convey again to Babs
her opposition to her constant interest in the Italians.

“Yes, and it’s very important,” put in Miss Davis before Babs could
answer. “In fact we’ve _got_ to find him.”

“Oh,” said Cara in bewilderment. This was something new, she
understood now; something new, but what?

Babs took her place in the front seat of the auto beside Cara, and
while Miss Davis was settling herself in the back seat, managed to
whisper enough to Cara to give the very least inkling of the matter.

“Something we lost,” she said, “and maybe Nicky has seen it. He was
there yesterday when we were closing up.”

“Oh,” said Cara again, and then she drove on.

Miss Davis seemed suddenly to have become speechless. Perhaps it was
exhaustion, for she must have labored under a heavy strain since
discovering the loss of the model, but, at any rate, she was now
drooping in the back seat of Cara’s car as if “every friend in the
world had deserted her”; that was the way her attitude impressed the
girls.

They tried to talk casually but it was a failure as far as Babs was
concerned, and when the usual group of urchins surrounded their car,
when it was stopped as near to Nicky’s house as Babs wanted Cara to
drive, it was a discouraged girl who alighted. Barbara Hale was sorry
she had ever bothered about these little foreigners, yet, quickly as
that thought darted through her mind, there came another.

What about Nicky saving the lighthouse lamp from darkness during that
awful storm? What other boy of his age would have been as brave as he
had been then?

“I’ll run over and see if he’s around,” she told Cara and Miss Davis,
in real fear that Miss Davis would insist upon going with her. “I’ll
be back in a few minutes.”

Over the rough tracks she stumbled. Everything seemed horrid. The air
was thick with smoke, there were odors of all kinds, from factory
fumes to puddles from rain, left standing in hidden places where even
the sun couldn’t find them.

And as she hurried along her opinion of all this had suddenly changed.
Yesterday she would have pitied those poor people living in such a
disordered place, but today she pitied herself that she had to go
through there.

“If I only hadn’t been so foolish,” she kept thinking. “And I’ve
missed a lot of good times this summer just by this.”

Presently she called to a group of children. And their answer brought
Babs to a sudden stop.

“You don’t mean that the Marcusis have moved away?” she repeated in
surprise.

“Yes, Mam, lit out last night,” a small boy told her. “Guess they
hadda skip,” he added impishly.

“They did not either,” defended another. “Some one took sick or
somthin’.”

But Barbara had to be sure. She could not believe that those people
were gone, without letting her know. But why should they have let her
know?

She stumbled on farther, the children tagging along at her heels,
saying all sorts of foolish things about Nicky’s family.

But she paid little attention to them, although her ears at least
heard every word they said.

“Yep, they didn’t pay the milk-man either,” one saucy little fellow
gaily announced. “An’ the old man’s in jail so they can’t do nawthin’
to him——”

“Shut up, you Tony, your folks ain’t such a much. Whata you knockin’
about?”

“Oh, run along about your business,” ordered Barbara sharply turning
unexpectedly around and facing them. “You don’t have to come with me.
I didn’t ask you to.”

“Beat it, fellers,” the big boy took up the cause. “She don’t want
you. I’ll show her the house.”

“Maybe you think she wants _you_, Smarty Leganto,” came back a
challenge for the chivalrous one. “She knows the place, don’t she? But
they ain’t anybody in it. They’s moved, we told you.”

It was no use. She couldn’t get rid of them. So she hurried along and
was now in front of that place likely called a house, by the man who
owned it, but was merely a shack to all other eyes.

The windows were raised, the hideously pictured curtains were not to
be seen, and the door stood wide open.

“Now you see,” came a taunt from the crowd. “They’s gone, ain’t they?
What did we tell you? Now, ain’t they gone?”

“Oh, do stop,” begged Barbara. “Of course they are gone. But why
shouldn’t they move if they wanted to?” This was by no means a
question, rather it was a declaration. She was trying to answer her
own question. “Why shouldn’t this family move if they wanted to?”

It takes so little to make excitement for such children as those
surrounding her, that even the difference in their clothes and hers,
the fact that she came in a car, and the still more surprising fact
that she should evince interest in a family like Nicky’s, served to
give the youngsters a wonderful time. And in spite of her protests
they were bound to make the most of it. And they did.

As she turned back to the car she wondered what she would say to Miss
Davis. If only she had not come along with them Babs might have told
the whole story to Cara, and together they could have thought up
something to do about it. Even a little delay would have helped so
much. But there Miss Davis sat in the car, her head out the side,
waiting eagerly for Babs’ return.

“I just can’t tell her they have moved,” Babs decided quickly, “not
just yet. I’ll say there was no one in.”

“All out!” exclaimed Miss Davis, just as Barbara knew she would. “But
we’ve got to find that boy——”

“I’ll come back with Cara in a little while,” Babs interrupted. “You
see, those people have to work, even the children, and it’s pretty
early to expect to find them around home.”

“But that boy,” (how Barbara wished she would not so persistently
attack Nicky) “he must be around some place. It seems to me I have met
him along the road every day this summer but just today,” wailed Miss
Davis.

“Don’t worry,” Cara ventured to remark. “We know how to find the
youngsters; don’t we Babs?” and she shot a look at Babs that was
infinitely comforting.

“Yes,” the other girl replied, already seated beside Cara. “We know
the haunts. I guess we’ll have to go over to the Community House now,”
she proposed. “I’m supposed to be around there some time this
morning.”

“Then drop me off home, please,” begged the still perturbed little
woman. “I couldn’t go over there again, that is, not just now,” she
hurried to modify, lest Cara might suspect she was really in distress
about something.

Just as if Cara didn’t.




                            CHAPTER XVIII

                              SUSPICIONS


No sooner had they deposited Miss Davis at her front gate than Cara
turned to Babs.

“Now see here, Sister,” she began facetiously, “you’ve got to tell me
all about this. What’s on your mind?”

“Of course, Cara, I intend to tell you. I’ve just been waiting for a
chance,” answered Babs, sullenly.

“Well, here’s your chance. Go ahead and tell. And judging from the
look on your alabaster face it needs to be told. Honestly Babs, you
look years older since yesterday. Nobody murdered, I hope?”

Babs laughed, but it was a sickly little laugh, and had nothing to do
with merriment.

“No, not murder exactly,” Babs replied after an embarrassed pause.
“But you know how seriously those old ladies take their family
heirlooms.”

“Yes.”

“And you know the Davis ladies are twins.”

“Yes.”

“Well, one twinnie wanted to show a family piece and the other twinnie
objected,” Babs continued, in a voice as even as a tape line put
through the phonograph.

“She would. All twinnies are that way. Go ahead,” proposed Cara a
little impatiently.

Barbara sighed. She had secretly gone over the details of the loss so
often since Miss Davis came this morning, that her weary brain fairly
pricked in dismay at encountering the subject in word form.

“Miss Davis brought a little ship model, one of those old-time
murderous, pirate-prisoner sailing things,” she began bravely, “and it
has disappeared.”

“Disappeared! Do you mean the famous Davis model of Columbus’ _Santa
Maria_?” Cara almost stopped her car unconsciously, in surprise.

“Yes,” said Babs, from tightened lips.

“Oh, how dreadful! How did it disappear? How could it, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” Babs flared back this time. “You don’t suppose I _do_
know, do you, Cara?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that, Babs; of course you don’t know,” Cara sort of
apologized. “But I thought you might have some idea. Here we are.
Going to stay long? I’ve got to drive Mother to the village——”

“Don’t think of coming for me, Cara,” Babs interrupted as she stepped
out of the car in front of the Community House. “I need the walk back
home. I’m not going to stay long, either,” she declared, “for I don’t
see a lot of fun in sorting this truck. Of course, we’ve promised, and
we’ve got to help,” she recalled, “but it’s women’s work; we do better
in swimming this time of year.”

“We certainly do, Babs,” Cara promptly agreed. “But you haven’t
unburdened your soul.” She had a merry way of making things easier.
Most of Babs’ troubles seemed to take wings when Cara Burke blew her
breath at them. But this was different. It wouldn’t go. It couldn’t go
when each step added weight to the worry.

Nicky was gone!

“You know,” Babs almost whispered to Cara, for she had one foot on the
running board and that brought her very close to Cara’s ear, “you
know,” she repeated, “Nicky’s folks have moved.”

“I guessed that,” Cara answered.

“Why?”

“Because I heard him begging you for money yesterday on the porch.
Don’t look so alarmed. I went out looking for you and heard him almost
sobbing for some money,” said Cara.

“Who heard us?” Another shock for Babs.

“Oh, don’t look so panicky,” smiled Cara. “I didn’t hear anything
important. Those youngsters are always after money and there was
nothing strange in Nicky’s wanting some. I suppose he wanted it to
help out with the moving.”

“I suppose so,” agreed Babs. Once again Cara vanquished a bugbear.
What harm had there been in Nicky’s asking for money, after all?

“What did the girls say?” Babs asked evenly. “Were they looking for
me?”

“Oh, you know what _they_ would say. Well, that’s what they said. But
Babs, old girl, you just better jump in here again and ride around
with me,” Cara proposed. “You don’t look a bit like Old Home Week and
you shouldn’t go in there. That’s a girl,” she chanted, for Babs was
stepping back into the car. “Now, sit close to your old friend and
pour out the whole horrible tale. How did the _Santa Maria_ disappear?
Who was around when you left last night?”

Babs felt a little gasp catch at her throat. That was it. Who was
around?

“Just Miss Davis and I were there,” she began, but her sigh meant more
than her words.

“Babs ducky,” pleaded Cara ever so kindly, “don’t you think you will
feel better when you tell me? You can trust me, can’t you?”

That appeal stirred a new emotion in Barbara Hale.

“Of course I can, Cara,” she answered instantly, “and you likely know
exactly what is worrying me. I’m afraid Nicky took that model!”

“Oh, Babs! He couldn’t. Not Nicky!”

“You’re a love to have such confidence in him, Cara. That helps.” Babs
showed her relief. “There must be a good reason for such confidence as
we have. But the poor little fellow! You see, how it looks; his
wanting money so badly, and then—this.”

Cara glanced at her wrist watch. “I’ve got an hour before time to go
for Mother,” she said, “so let’s go down to the beach. The brisk air
will whip us up a little. We’re fagged,” she said smilingly,
“especially you. Like old ladies who need catnip tea.”

A few minutes later they were discussing Nicky’s flight earnestly, and
with a determined effort to help him.

“But how can we ever find him?” lamented Babs. “You know how queer
those Italians are. If we just ask a question about where the Marcusis
have moved to they’ll suspect we are enemies and they’ll do everything
to hide their tracks. What on earth can we do?” Babs wondered and
wondered.

“Are you sure no other boy was with him when he peeked in the window?”
Cara questioned.

“Not sure; I couldn’t see well for it was nearly dark. But you know he
is almost always alone.”

“Yes; poor kid, he doesn’t get much chance to play, I guess,” Cara
replied. “Seems as if he is either selling junk or falling off
bicycles. You never got any reply from Washington about his heroism,
did you?”

“No. If only I did that might help,” sighed Babs. “But Cara, I can’t
help thinking that Nicky looked guilty when he bolted out before Dad’s
car. Even Miss Davis noticed that.”

“Oh, Miss Davis!” scoffed Cara. “She’d be sure to think that. But it
doesn’t mean a thing. Babs, I’m sure Nicky wouldn’t go off without
leaving some word for you. He’s too smart to forget you.”

“Why?” asked Babs innocently.

“Why? Because he idolizes you. Because he thinks you are his guardian
angel. Don’t you know the girls even said your father was going to
adopt him?”

“Cara Burke!” That left Babs speechless.

“Yes, indeed they did,” Cara repeated. “And it wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Can you believe that Dud asked Dad if _we_ couldn’t take him? Dud is
just crazy about the youngster. And maybe you didn’t know that Dud
took him and his old bike and the oil can all the way over to
Breakintake to have a real photograph made. He declared he was going
to send it to some news syndicate——”

“For gracious sake!” exclaimed Babs. “He didn’t!”

“He did, too. You don’t know what a hustler my brother is,” wound up
Cara, proudly.

“Well,” gasped Babs, brightening at all this good news, “I guess I do
know how smart Dud is, Cara. Didn’t I spend hours racing around in his
good little car when I should have been doing other things at your
house party?”

“You certainly did,” laughed Cara. They were cheered up considerably
now.

“And just imagine the girls thinking that we, Dad and I, could take
Nicky,” Babs went on. “They evidently don’t know how poor we are,” she
said, as if glad to say it, as if she feared giving Cara a false
impression of her own humble circumstances.

“Poor! indeed! You’re rich in a lot of things, Babs,” spoke up Cara.
“And if you wanted to take Nicky you would soon find out what a real
help he could be.”

“I wish I had taken him—last night,” declared Babs, tossing her head
to one side so far that her hair came tumbling down like a curtain
over one eye. “But it’s too late to make wishes; what we have got to
do is to make plans. You see, Cara, it would be so much better if we
could get hold of Nicky right away, because Miss Davis’ twin sister
Tillie is away. If we could find him, somehow I feel we would find the
_Santa Maria_.”

“You don’t think he took it?”

“No, I don’t. But I feel he would know something about it,” Babs
insisted.

“So do I: I might as well admit that,” Cara promptly added. “But say,
Babs, did you ever find out anything at all about who did the
beautiful wood carving?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“It must have been done in Nicky’s home.”

“Why? He could have gone out for it, some place.”

“Hardly. Because one morning Dud went around to the house and gave the
whistle he had learned to call Nicky with. When Nicky answered him his
sweater pockets were filled with fine wood shavings. Dud said he kept
playing with the shavings and smelling of their sandalwood odor. There
wasn’t a doubt about it they came straight from Nicky’s house.”

“That’s very queer,” Babs pondered. “No one but a man could do such
skilled work, and who could the man be? That family is helped by the
town, you know. They have no real means of support, since their father
was taken from them.”

“Well, I’ve got to go now,” Cara decided after a glance at her watch.
“Mother is coming over to the club, the Community House of course. She
has spent the morning digging up family relics. Hope she hasn’t
unearthed any of my love letters,” the girl chuckled. “They _would_ be
worth exhibiting.”

“Or any of your early attempts at art,” added Babs. “They’d make quite
a showing if Mrs. Brownell would let you put them on easels on her old
mahogany table.”

“Oh, that old table! Wasn’t it too funny how they fought about it
yesterday? I suppose it will be the spinet today. Really that spinet
is worth fighting over,” Cara added thoughtfully. “It is a genuine
antique.”

“Don’t let’s talk about antiques,” begged Babs. “It gives me the
shivers, after the ship model. But say, Cara, I’ve a notion to go to
Captain Quiller. He ought to know where the Marcusis would be apt to
go to.”

“Bright idea,” agreed Cara, swinging an arm around her companion.
“I’ll take you after lunch. Don’t worry in the meantime. I’ll drop in
and see if Miss Davis is alive yet.” Cara would do anything and
everything to help Babs.

“All right, thanks a lot. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Cara,”
said Babs, affectionately. “You see, I’ve lost Glenn.”

“Yes _I_ see,” chuckled Cara. “He runs around with Dud and sometimes
they condescend to let me hitch on. But girls are best; aren’t they,
Babby?”

“Yes _they_ are, Cara. See what I did by chumming with even a little
fellow. I’d give a whole lot this very minute to forget Nicky
Marcusi.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“No, I don’t suppose I would either,” amended Babs. “And besides, we
have a mystery to ferret out. Who carved the candlesticks?”

“A noble soul whoever he is,” declared Cara, “for Mother declares no
one else could have done that work, and Mother always knows—about
candlesticks,” said Cara slyly.

“But the boat,” sighed Babs as they were again taking their seats in
the auto. “Why will twins inherit valuable war-time convict-prison-made
models?”

“Because, being twins they had to inherit something silly,” laughed
Cara. “But let’s hope for good news from Captain Quiller. Dad thinks
he’s a rare old character. He goes down to the lighthouse often just
to talk with him. I’ll tell you, Babby, we started something at that
famous house party, didn’t we?”

“A lot,” agreed Babs. She threw out her arms yawning with relief. “I
do feel better,” she said with a smothered sigh. “You have no idea how
blue I was.”

“Haven’t I? Didn’t I suspect murder? Say, Babs, you can show more
moods in your face than a whole movie show. You ought to go into the
movies,” she joked. “You wouldn’t have to do a thing but look and then
keep on looking, differently.”

They were able to joke now, even Babs was almost like herself again.
But it was no easy matter to feel cheerful and also feel somewhat
responsible for the loss of that precious model.

Not that Barbara had had anything directly to do with it, but because
she had opposed everybody in keeping up her interest in the little
Italian. And just now it certainly looked pretty black for Nickolas
Marcusi Junior’s reputation.

“Trouble is,” said Cara without hinting at what she was going to talk
about, “if they found Nicky has had anything to do with that they’ll
just grab him up and clap him in a reform school.”

“Oh, Cara, they wouldn’t!” exclaimed Babs in real terror.

“Well, that’s what I think they might do,” said Cara, regretting
instantly her careless remark. “Of course, with such good friends as
your father and my father and Captain Quiller he might have a better
chance.”

“Cara, it would be simply terrible if the State should take that boy
from his mother after having taken the father. Oh, we must hurry to
Captain Quiller,” wailed Babs. “Miss Davis is so nervous she might go
to old Chief Morgan, and he doesn’t know any more about police work
than the ugly old stupid yellow dog that hounds his heels.”

“I’m sorry I said that, Babs,” confessed Cara, seeing how newly
excited Babs had become. “There is no reason in the world to worry
about Nicky. Why shouldn’t he move away if his mother wanted to?”

“I try to feel that way, Cara, but I suppose—oh well, we’ll see what
the Captain says. I’ll be ready any time you are.”

“About two,” said Cara, and then they both saw Dora waiting on the
porch—waiting with a letter in her outstretched hand.




                             CHAPTER XIX

                           NEWS FROM NICKY


“I thought you’d never come,” grumbled Dora, holding the letter
expectantly towards Barbara. “Here.”

“Why Dora, you didn’t have to stand waiting for me just because a
letter came, did you?” Babs could not refrain from that much of a
rebuke.

“Oh, no, of course I didn’t,” sighed Dora. “But that’s me, always
worrying about other folks’ business.”

“What is there to worry about?” again Babs questioned. She was
purposely holding that soiled envelope without attempting to open it.
The scrawl on its flap was positive proof that the message, whatever
it might be, was sent by Nicky.

“Worry about?” repeated the maid sourly. She was watching furtively
and, there wasn’t a doubt of it, she expected to find out what was in
that letter. “The way them Eytalians run around this place——”

“What Italians?” asked Babs impatiently. She too was anxious to know
what was in the letter, but she had no idea of opening it just then.

“Them children, that old Nick, or what ever it is you call him. He
raced up that path——”

“Running?”

“Runnin’?” Dora would repeat every word. “’Course not, runnin’, but on
an old forlorn bicycle that he let drop right on my cucumber vines.”

“That’s too bad,” said Babs meaning it.

“And it’s no easy job to raise cucumbers and keep them from the bugs,
let alone to get a cuke off them, and then have some one ‘bust’ in and
destroy them.” Dora was mad.

Barbara was on her way upstairs now, but she turned around sharply.

“Did he really destroy your cucumber vine, Dora?” she asked sharply.

“No, he didn’t. Do you think I’d be fool enough to let him? But it
wasn’t his fault. I just caught him in time. And I guess I gave him a
piece of my mind that he won’t forget in a hurry——”

But Barbara didn’t wait for all that. She was in her room, the little
brass bolt slipped across the door, and she was now opening the
letter.

Scrawled over the front was the address:

“Miss Barbara Hail” ... She laughed at that, “Hail”, she repeated.
“I’ll have to show that to Cara.”

And like one so anxious to learn something that he dreads to know, she
was hesitating. Finally she thrust a nail file under the much
befingered envelope flap and took out the page of old-fashioned,
heavily lined paper. She read: “Dear Friend, Wear goin’ away, gotta
go. I’ll tell you later. I didn’t steal the boat, and can’t tell you
that either just now. Thank you, Nickolas Marcusi Junior.”

“He didn’t steal the boat! I knew he didn’t,” she rejoiced. “Oh, I am
so glad——”

Again and again she read the scrawled, badly spelled lines. But he
didn’t steal the boat and that was all she cared about.

Instinctively she went over to her dressing table, pulled out the
small drawer in which she kept all her best beloved letters, and was
about to place Nicky’s welcome news in there, when she looked again at
the dirty smudges upon the paper.

“But it’s precious,” she decided, taking a clean plain envelope from
her own box and slipping the other into it. Then she placed the newest
addition to her important collection in with the others.

What a weight had suddenly been lifted from her heart! She had not
realized it was so heavy until it was gone, and now she felt so
different, so happy, so light hearted! She would almost have told Dora
the news, only, of course, Dora would not have understood it.

But she must tell Cara at once. Down to the telephone she flew, and in
a way that only she and Cara could have understood, she promptly
managed to transmit the wonderful news.

“And I must go over to Miss Davis just as soon as we can after lunch,”
she panted. “I knew he didn’t,” she repeated again, guarding her words
so that no other listener than Cara could have understood them.

“I never thought so either,” Cara was answering. “Yes, I’ll call for
you early. Good-bye, I’m awfully glad.”

But the girls were so rejoiced to receive those scant, scrawled words,
that they had not realized how little they could really mean to any
one but themselves. Nicky said he hadn’t stolen the boat and that was
enough for Barbara, but who else would believe him? Would Miss Davis?

And he had plainly intimated that he knew all about it being stolen;
how did he know that? And why couldn’t he tell why they had moved away
so secretly?

Just a glimmer of this phase of the situation slowly devolved upon
Babs, as she flew about happily, taking up her tasks which she had so
suddenly allowed to accumulate. Even her room had not been made up,
when Miss Davis came early that morning with the bad news. But now
Babs was fixing things up, without really knowing she was doing
anything. It was no trouble at all to straighten her row of books—they
always seemed to fall over without having been touched—and she even
dusted the mirror and the hand mirror, folded her towels. Oh, she
could do anything now, she felt so much better.

But how did he know that model had been stolen?

Babs took the letter from the drawer and read it again, as if she
could thereby penetrate the mind that had written those words.

“Can’t tell you that either just now,” she read after having read the
previously written sentence, about his not having stolen the boat. And
she wondered and wondered why he couldn’t tell? Why could he not have
dropped a hint? But, of course, he must have been in a great hurry,
and it was good of him to make that attempt to reach her, Barbara
tried to satisfy herself.

“One would think I had stolen the old boat,” she laughed ever so
lightly. “And imagine the girls thinking that we would want to adopt a
little Italian boy! How quaint! as Lida would say,” and Barbara’s
thoughts raced from one end of the subject to the other, but never did
they seem willing to take up a different subject.

At lunch Dr. Hale had something to say.

“Do you know, Babs,” he began gently, “that you have been neglecting
me?”

“Why, Dads!” she exclaimed, affection pouring out with the words.

“Yes. You know I suggested that you dig up something for _us_ to show
in that fair, or whatever it is you are holding, and I haven’t heard a
word about your digging.”

“I know, Dads,” Barbara replied quickly. “But I’ve been—so busy.” She
was very meek now.

Dora’s faded eyes were alive enough to flash her a significant
challenge at that, but Babs pretended not to have seen.

“Oh, I know you have been busy,” her father agreed. “But you see, Babs
dear, _we_ should be represented. So I got up there in the attic
myself this morning, and _I_ found something,” he proclaimed proudly.

“You did, Daddy? What?”

“You shan’t know until you have finished your lunch. You ought to eat
that nice fresh egg,” he reminded the girl who had pushed the egg
aside.

“I don’t think it is fresh, that is not very fresh,” Babs stated. “But
I don’t care for eggs anyhow,” she added.

“Not fresh?” Dora was on hand now, “Why they’ve just came,” she
declared, as if her kitchen pride had been greatly insulted.

“Don’t we get any more from Babs’ little Michael Angelo?” the doctor
asked playfully, meaning Nicky, of course.

“No,” Babs answered. “Nicky’s folks have moved away,” she felt
constrained to add.

And that brought on a discussion into which Dora forced her opinions.
Dr. Hale was not very much interested, but he tolerated the others as
they hit back and forth in their retorting remarks, for Dora could not
be expected to speak pleasantly of the “Eytalians.”

Not that the maid was always disagreeable; indeed she was not. She was
as “good as gold,” almost always. Even Barbara would be glad to
testify to that. But what “riled her” was Barbara stooping to bother
with those foreigners.

But finally Babs arose from the table, and the doctor followed.

“What did you find in the attic, Dads?” she begged to know, as arm in
arm they went, as they did after every meal however humble, into the
sitting-room.

“Guess?” he teased.

“Oh, how could I?” murmured the girl. She gave his arm an extra tug
and fell upon the arm of his big chair as he dropped into it.

“Well,” he drawled, just to tantalize her, “it’s small and it’s
square——”

“A little footstool, the worsted embroidered one?” she guessed.

“Nopey. It’s something to hang up.”

“An old picture, of course. I knew we had some Currier and Ives
prints,” she continued, “and I should have looked them up. Where did
you hide it, Dad?”

“Not a picture, dear, but what they called a sampler. I suppose it
means a sample-er because it’s made up of sample letters.”

“A sampler? Really Dad! Where is it?” Babs demanded impatiently. “I
have never seen one in the attic.”

“Well, it was there. In an old trunk; the one with the hobbed-nail
cover, you know. But you don’t spend as much time in the attic as I
imagine some girls do, Babby. Guess your old dad keeps you too busy
with his bugs,” the doctor murmured.

“You don’t either Dad. _Where_ is that sampler?”

“Just give me a chance and I’ll get it,” the doctor answered, as if he
had not had plenty of chance.

But at last he left his chair and went over to the old walnut
bookcase. From the bottom, where the stained-glass door hid the big
shelves, he drew out the old heirloom.

“It was your great-great grandmother’s,” he told his daughter, “and
it’s pretty old. I wonder it hasn’t fallen apart,” he reasoned, as he
held the little mahogany frame at arm’s length for his daughter’s
inspection.

“How quaint!” she exclaimed, without realizing she was using the term
the girls always joked Lida about. “Isn’t it finely embroidered?”

“I thought you would like it,” her father said, a ring of satisfaction
in his tone. “Well, I was talking to David Hunt this morning, our
honorable mayor you know, and he’s all keyed up over your Community
House show. He says there isn’t a doubt but the place will be given to
the borough now. I guess Mary-Louise Trainor knew what she was doing
when she started her Old Home Week. She got all the women interested
with their patchwork quilts,” the doctor chuckled, “and then she got
you girls busy. What this old beach doesn’t know about heirlooms and
family skeletons when the show is over won’t be worth knowing,” he
finished jokingly.

But Barbara was looking intently at the sampler. So this had been the
delicate handwork of the great-great grandmother. The faded silks and
worsteds still held enough color to show the glory that had been woven
into the letters, the symbols, and the flaring peacock.

“And I hate to sew or embroider,” Barbara said aloud, “so I guess I
don’t take after grandmother. Here’s her name in the corner. ‘Mary
Nelson, age 16 years 1831,’” she read. “That’s almost one hundred
years ago.”

“Yes. The Nelsons were proud old stock, Babs,” her father told her.
“And I always thought you were about one hundredth of one per cent
Nelson,” he laughed. “But go get slicked up. I’m going over to that
show myself this afternoon, and we can both take the sampler. I
promised Dave Hunt I’d look in, and he asked me to be there at
two-thirty this afternoon. Seems he expects some other old settlers to
go there and greet the ladies, and he wants to include me.”

“Oh, that will be fine,” said Barbara, feeling that it wouldn’t be
anything of the kind. For proud as she was of her professional father,
and glad and happy as she might be to bring that sampler to the
Community House, she had other plans for the afternoon. She was going
out with Cara to Miss Davis’ house to tell her that Nicky hadn’t
stolen the ship. After that they were both going down to the
lighthouse to see Captain Quiller, and they hoped he might know
something of the Marcusis’ whereabouts.

But how could Barbara refuse to go to the Community House with her
father when he was so sure she would be delighted to go?

He saw her hesitate. “Unless you have some better plans,” he said
then. “If you have, of course——”

“Nothing could be better than going with you, Dad,” she told him, “but
I did promise to go—some place with Cara.”

“Oh, that’s all right, of course,” the doctor quickly replied. “I’m
always glad to have you go any place with Cara,” he added. “She’s a
fine girl and she has done you a heap of good.” He ran his hand under
her chin at that, in a way he had of bringing her face up to look into
his own.

“You’re better this afternoon,” he continued. “Thought you had
something on your mind this morning but I see it’s all right now,” he
ended, in that unerring way some fathers and all mothers seem to
possess. “Then, you’ll turn in the sampler, of course?” he questioned.
“It wouldn’t look just the thing for a doctor of bacteriology to
contribute, would it?”

“Certainly I’ll take it, Dad. And I’ll get there before you leave, I
hope,” said Barbara, feeling guilty that she was failing him in his
laudable pride, while she was following her own selfish interest in
trying to ferret out the suspicion that had fallen upon an obscure
Italian boy.

She knew it wasn’t just being generous to Nicky; that her interest in
him was a gratification of her love of adventure.

And she realized again that as a girl she was—different.




                              CHAPTER XX

                           FIGHTING IT OUT


As might have been expected Cara went into ecstasies over the old
sampler.

“You ought to bring it right in,” she counselled Babs. “They’ll have a
real honest-to-goodness opening this afternoon with speeches and all,
and you should have the Nelson sampler there for folks to inspect.
Besides, Babs,” she pointed out, “it was so wonderful of your father
to unearth it. He’s a perfect peach,” she went on, without once taking
her brown eyes off the little framed sampler she was holding.

“And I feel like a criminal not to have gone in the old show with
him,” Babs confessed. “Oh, Cara,” she exclaimed impatiently, “haven’t
I been an idiot?”

“Well, maybe,” agreed her chum laughingly, “but you’re a different
sort of idiot from the common garden variety. Let’s go. Where to? Want
to peek in and see if the old Davis twin is still breathing?”

“I think I had better,” demurred Babs. “Surely she’ll believe Nicky is
innocent. But suppose she shouldn’t?”

“Well, if you ask me,” remarked Cara, in that funny way she had of
saying slangy things prettily, “I’d say she surely will believe him
guilty. She’s got to have somebody guilty because the boat is gone,
you know,” Cara finished, sagely.

“Oh, yes; I know that,” agreed Babs, “but it isn’t Nicky.”

“I hope not,” Cara answered her briefly.

They drove along the sea-shore road, both silent for a few moments.
This was unusual for these two girls, who always had so much to say to
each other, but both were very busy thinking.

Presently they sighted the little house which made a home for the
Davis twins. It was quaint, and had a row of latticed rose-bushes in
front where every body else kept their porch, and the porch was a side
“stoop,” square and comfy looking. The Misses Davis were known for
their good taste, and the inherited boat model may have favorably
influenced it.

Babs jumped out of the car. “Doesn’t seem to be any one around,” she
remarked as she left Cara.

No one was at home, they soon found out, and after vain attempts to
get a response for her knocks, Babs returned to the car.

“I hope she isn’t dead in there all alone,” she remarked facetiously.
She was anxious about the worried little woman, but not to the point
so carelessly expressed.

“No danger. Only the good die of lost boat models,” Cara said, keeping
up the feeble joke. “We can go right over to the Community House now,
can’t we?”

“I suppose so,” sighed Barbara. “But I wish I could get a word in with
Miss Davis. She may go talking around, and you see, she couldn’t
mention Nicky’s name without mentioning mine.”

“That is a nuisance,” her friend agreed. “Did you tell your father?”
Cara asked suddenly.

“No.”

“You didn’t?”

“No. It is about the first thing of importance that I have ever kept
from him, too. Makes me feel guilty,” Babs confessed. “Let’s go down
to the old show and I’ll deliver the grandmother fancy work. That
ought to help,” she tried to joke, but there was little mirth in the
effort.

A line of cars blackened the edge of the road as the girls came upon
the scene.

“Folks getting here early,” said Cara. “You better hurry in with the
sampler, Babs, or you won’t find a spare nail left to hang it on. Oh,
there are the girls!” she exclaimed, for the other girls were waiting
outside the strip of land that was too near the ocean to grow good
grass, so it really could not be called a lawn. “Hello there!” she
called to them.

They waved in answer and still waited. They were Louise, Esther and
Lida; Ruth was not with them.

Both Cara and Barbara noticed how they waited; that they did not run
towards the car as they usually did. Neither remarked this, but they
both understood. Then, as Barbara was almost up to the group, and Cara
was a few steps back of her, she saw what the girls meant.

They were not very keen on greeting her!

They were actually holding back from speaking to her, slighting her
and ignoring her.

Cara must have seen this also, for she sprang into the embarrassing
gap as she was sure to do.

“Think we were not coming?” she asked cheerfully.

“No, we weren’t worrying,” Louise said very, very evenly. “We are not
going to be on the girls’ committee any more, so we just waited to
tell you.” She said this to Barbara but was too constrained to use
Barbara’s name. Every word seemed icy cold.

“Why, what’s the matter?” Barbara asked, naturally.

“Oh, nothing much,” evaded Louise, “but I for one don’t care to serve
on the committee.” Her lip was curled in unmistakable scorn, and the
other girls, while saying nothing, were looking just as Louise looked,
disdainful.

“Did anything happen?” Cara asked, for once unable to laugh off
trouble.

“Well, yes there did,” Esther condescended to reply. “Miss Davis came
around here just as _we_ came. She said lots of mean things about the
girls’ committee not watching things, and we’re not going to take any
of that stuff,” scoffed Esther. “We don’t have to.”

“Watching things? What’s gone?” Barbara asked, she had to find out
whether or not the girls knew about the boat model; of course, she
feared they did.

“Miss Davis wouldn’t say just what,” Louise answered. “But _something_
has been stolen. The idea! Just as if we could have or should have
been around here early in the morning. Come on girls, I’m going,” she
finished crisply, and with an unmistakable look towards Barbara. She
did achieve a little smile when Cara looked her way, however. They
always favored Cara.

“Of course, go if you want to,” flared back Babs. “There’s no reason
why you shouldn’t. But if anything is stolen I can’t see why it would
be blamed on—us,” she declared. She was going to say “blamed on you”
but she changed it to include herself.

“Well, she did blame us and you’re chairman so I suppose you’ll have
to fight it out with her.” Again Louise avoided using Babs’ name as
she said this.

“Of course it’s that little Italian that tags around after you,”
Esther put in. “And Miss Davis says she’ll clap him in a reform school
if she lays her eyes on him,” was the way Esther wound that up. Just
as if the reform school should include Babs, if justice were really
doled out according to Esther’s ideas.

Babs was too indignant to answer. She stood there, digging her
slippers into the sand and biting her lip. Her face was white and set
in strained lines, and she knew, herself, that if she spoke just then
she would say something that she might regret.

So she swung around sharply and left the girls, Cara standing there
with them.

Crowds were coming in now, and she, Barbara Hale, who had been chosen
to head the girls’ work was being left alone, to her own resources and
misery, and the women, and even the mayor, perhaps, would talk to her
about all they had done, praise their work. How absurd!

She hoped her father wasn’t there. That would add to her humiliation.
And even more than this, she hoped Miss Davis was nowhere about.

“The Italian boy who always tags after me,” she thought bitterly.
“Yes, that’s it. Those girls won’t have anything to do with me or
anyone else unless we keep away from——”

She couldn’t say the word that was already upon her lips. She couldn’t
call the poor “scum.” That would have been beneath her. But in her
anger she could not help blaming the girls for their narrowness.

Why could they not have stuck together and proved to Miss Davis that
harmony was always reliable?

Her white face burned now and her eyes felt sightless, as she entered
the house. How devastating anger can be? How it poisons, and how it
hurts!

“Those snobs!” she was thinking. “Cutting me like that. They were glad
of a chance, of course. As if I cared.”

But she did care, a lot. She was so indignant she could not direct her
thoughts. She just couldn’t think straight.

Entering the room she immediately espied her father.

“Daddy!” she called out. “I’ve brought our heirloom. Come along while
I give it to the chairman.”

Her father clutched her arm contentedly. And Babs was, as always,
immensely proud of him. He did not “mix up much” according to popular
opinion, but he was always to be depended upon when anything
educational was astir.

Babs was dragging him along through the crowd. Folks were smiling and
bowing to them, for everybody knew, or knew of, Dr. Winthrop Hale.

“Here, over here, Dad,” marshalled Barbara, as gaily as she could
manage to be.

She gave one vigorous push through a close tangle in the crowd, and
emerged in front of the chairman; she had been going after the hat she
recognized as belonging to Mrs. Frederick Winters.

And standing with Mrs. Winters was little Miss Davis. She was so short
Barbara could not have seen her until she was right alongside of her.

For a moment Babs felt too panicky to speak. And what could she say
with her father standing there smiling? His hat in his hand made him
look quite professional, Babs knew, for it was a soft gray hat and he
carried it like the gentleman he was.

But Miss Davis!

“Oh, Miss Davis!” burst out Babs without knowing she was going
to. “Just see what we have brought. Daddy found it in the attic.”
She was chattering like a squirrel. “Isn’t it wonderful? My
great-great-grandmother Nelson’s!”

“Nelson’s!” exclaimed Miss Davis. “Nelson of Massachusetts! Why Dr.
Hale! You don’t tell me you are related to Mary Nelson?”

“My great-grandmother, Madam,” said the doctor proudly, bringing the
gray hat in and out suavely.

“And my great-grandmother’s first cousin! There! I knew there was some
bond between us, Barbara!” Miss Davis declared excitedly, getting hold
of Barbara’s arm and squeezing it with more vigor than might have been
expected, even after Babs had felt the first decided squeeze.

“Oh, how wonderful!” trilled the girl. Her exclamation had a twofold
meaning, and one fold applied to her relief that the other matter was
not being brought up before her father.

“Now let those girls cut,” she was thinking. “I guess I can have some
friends of my own, and relations even. Think of it! An enemy, one to
be feared, to turn out some precious relation. All through a faded old
sampler!”

The relief was like the snapping of a string somewhere in Babs’
make-up, for she would have danced around if there had been room. As
it was, she couldn’t budge without stepping on somebody’s feet.

Her father and the chairman, Mrs. Winters, were quickly engaged in
conversation, and the sampler was in the chairman’s hands when Babs
managed to drag Miss Davis away.

“I must speak to you,” she whispered, timidly.

“Did you get it?” breathed Miss Davis hopefully.

“No; but I know something about it.”

“Oh, do you!”

Instantly Barbara regretted the way she had said that. Miss Davis
thought “knowing something about it” would mean much more than it did.

They finally reached a spot where they could speak privately, without
being overheard.

“What is it?” begged Miss Davis.

“He, Nicky, didn’t take it,” Babs answered quickly.

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know. He says in a note he wrote me that he couldn’t tell
just then. Of course he will when I see him.”

Miss Davis’s face dropped like a faded flower falling from its stem.

“My dear child,” she murmured, “this is awful. I felt sure you had
recovered it, you were so cheerful.”

“But I am sure now that you will get it,” insisted Barbara. “I know I
can depend upon Nicky, and if it hadn’t been for Father wanting to
fetch in the sampler this afternoon I might have found him. But you
see,” she pointed out affectionately, “I really couldn’t disappoint
Dad. He so seldom takes an interest in things like this.”

“Yes, you couldn’t disappoint a man like your father, Barbara. He’s
one of Nature’s noblemen,” Miss Davis declared fervently. “And I’m
simply delighted to find that we can claim a relationship.” Her faded
eyes sought Barbara’s and they tried to smile, but her lips, her mouth
merely twitched. She was suffering in her anxiety.

Instinctively Barbara put out her hand and pressed the slender
fingers, that seemed so nervously restless upon the silken cord
gathering in the little lady’s bag.

“I’m so sorry about it, Miss Davis,” Barbara murmured, “but I’m
perfectly sure it will be all right. There’s something we can’t even
guess, some reason why we can’t find it. But I’m sure it’s safe or
Nicky would never have written the note the way he did.”

“What did he say?” asked Miss Davis in a very tiny voice.

Babs told her. She dwelled upon the especial significance of every
meager word.

“And you see, Miss Davis,” she pointed out, “Nicky is really very
wise. He has had to learn such a lot in those few years of his, that
he’s as wise as a boy much older.”

“Yes; I can understand that,” assented the other. “But—he may be
wayward.”

“Oh, he isn’t really.” Barbara was thinking of the girls and their
hateful gossip about a reform school. “He just does everything for his
mother,” she said jerkily. “And he’s the best boy——”

“I was speaking to Mr. Thornton confidentially this morning,” Miss
Davis said. “You know he has charge of wayward children——”

“But Nicky isn’t wayward, not a bit,” defended Babs, nervously.

“Well, I hope not. But Mr. Thornton said it was best for such children
to be where they would _have_ to learn right from wrong——”

“Oh, Miss Davis! But Nicky knows!” Babs gasped a little too loud, for
folks around her turned sharply to see why any one would be so
excited.

“The mayor is speaking,” said a voice like vinegar right into
Barbara’s surprised right ear.

Her silence then was resolute.




                             CHAPTER XXI

                     BRIGHTER BUT NOT QUITE CLEAR


So that was what the girls meant when they spoke of the threatened
reform school. Miss Davis had not burst out in anger, as Babs had
imagined she might have done. How different things were after all.
Perhaps it was foolish to get so excited. But the girls seemed so
hateful. That was what hurt so. They just enjoyed cutting her, Barbara
was quickly thinking, and in doing so she was again building up a wall
of imagination that might be all wrong; just as she had been wrong
about the reform school.

It had been a wonderful opening at the Community House. Speeches were
made by many prominent men and women interested in the development of
the Community House plan, and of course, a tribute had been paid to
the girls’ part in the affair. Best of all Barbara Hale stood there,
right beside her proud father, and heard her own name called out as a
most efficient young chairman. There was some satisfaction in that.

How much that made up for! Barbara hadn’t realized that she cared
until the glory was being all swept away, when the girls threatened to
resign. But all the same, she saw them there now with Cara as cheer
leader, and they did clap their hands in the applause that followed
the calling out of her name. So perhaps they were sorry for their
spite. She was glad of that too. Another surprise for her. Miss Davis
stood beside her and had her kindly arm around Barbara’s waist. This,
no doubt, had helped change the girls’ opinion. Or maybe it wasn’t
changed either way, as she had feared.

Well, at any rate, things looked brighter. The family sampler was
placed among the things to be selected in the final issue of prizes,
and none of the other girls had brought any heirlooms in. Cara talked
of loaning a very old Chinese print, but she decided it might not be
understood so she didn’t bring it in after all.

“Might think the laundry man gave it to us for Christmas,” she joked
when Babs urged her to fetch it. “No, I don’t think I will. It
wouldn’t jibe in with Mrs. Brownell’s early American table.” This of
course had become the standard joke of the entire exhibit. The table
set the style. If it didn’t go with the table it wouldn’t go with the
show, was the way Cara argued, humorously.

So that Babs had fared very well after all, and she cared because her
father cared. Now folks would not speak of her as a girl deprived of a
girl’s pleasures, because she had to help her father in his laboratory
work.

Everything was bustle and confusion when Cara slipped around through a
little pantry door, came up the back way, and grabbed Barbara.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “The girls are all over their huff.
We shouldn’t have kept them so long waiting. That’s enough to make
anybody mad.”

“Oh, I don’t care,” Babs answered, somewhat truthfully for she was
feeling very brave now. “We’ve finished our work, anyway. The women
will take charge now.”

“But you’re not going to—to keep it up, are you Babs?” asked Cara,
anxiously.

“You mean—the scrap?”

“Yes. Really, they are sorry.”

“They ought to be,” Babs retorted. “Why should they blame me?”

“Oh, you know what kids they are,” laughed Cara. “Come on. I’m going
for a soda. I’m choked. Come along. Want to fetch your daddy?”

“I guess he’s riding with Mr. Hunt,” Babs answered. “Let’s go. I’m
smothered,” and bidding a quick good-bye to the newly found relation,
Miss Isabel Davis, Barbara hurried along with Cara.

The soda was refreshing. They sipped it leisurely in Hills, both girls
a little tired and one girl, Babs, a little anxious.

“If only old Captain Quiller knows where Nicky may have gone,” she
said, “I feel positive we will be able to clear everything up.
Wherever do you suppose the old model went to, anyway?” she asked
again, for the question was constantly recurring to her.

“If I could guess that,” Cara answered, “I would be smart. Look who’s
coming!” she broke off suddenly. “There’s Dud and Glenn.”

“’Low there!” sang out Cara’s brother as he espied them. “Where on
earth did you two hail from? I had an idea you were in Europe or some
such town. Haven’t seen you——”

“For a month of blue moons,” Babs supplied. “Hello Glenn! Where have
_you_ been? Forgotten where Dr. Hale lives?” she joked, for her friend
Glenn had rather deserted her lately.

“Nopey. I haven’t. But you girls are always so goshed busy a fellow
doesn’t dare bust in,” Glenn replied. “Have more soda, or a lolly-pop
or sumthin’? Just to be sociable, do,” he urged, for the girls had
pushed their almost empty glasses aside.

“Couldn’t possibly,” Cara answered.

“Nor I,” declared Babs. “The best I could do to oblige would be to
accept a box of nice two-toned writing paper, Glenn; that is if you
insist, of course.”

“Well, we’ll get to the writing paper after the soda,” Glenn replied
dryly. “How do you like our new coats of tan? Dud has had me out at
dawn running up and down the beach, training you know,” he explained.
The girl with the paper cap, and gingham apron, and cheerful smile had
taken the boys’ order. She must have loved to serve soda the way she
smiled at those boys.

They joked and chatted until Babs wondered if the hour planned for her
visit to the lighthouse would be all used up, there at Hills. It was
pleasant to meet the boys again, and they were going to camp, a
military training camp, late in the summer, so that they too had much
to talk about. But she could not spare the time.

Glenn and Dudley had become great friends; just as great as Babs and
Cara; that was evident.

“And oh, say!” sang out Dudley suddenly. “Know what?”

“No, what?” answered Babs punning on his exclamation.

“Our little Nicky brought me the corkingest little wooden mug, all
carved in queer birds and little beasties——”

“When?” interrupted Babs eagerly.

“When what? Birds or beasties?” asked Dudley.

“Oh, when did he bring them, silly?” Cara asked her brother. She
understood Babs’ eagerness.

“Well,” drawled Dudley, as a boy will when he knows a girl is anxious,
“to be exact——” He looked at his watch.

“Please tell me when he came, Dud?” Babs asked frankly. “I’ve lost
track of Nicky and I must find him.”

“Oh; that’s different,” replied the boy. “Well, he came this morning
while Glenn and I were knocking up some wonderful tennis. He crawled
through the hedge and I imagine he swam the brook. He looked just
about like something that had swum a brook when the brook was being
swept out. He can look too funny, that youngster.”

“Did he say anything about having moved?” Barbara asked impatiently.

“Nary a word. But say, Babs, they don’t move, they flit, like the
birds. And a good thing too. Lucky dogs! Everybody ought to flit
instead of moving. Remember when we last moved, little sister?”

“Oh, forget it,” answered Cara. “Don’t try to remember it. But say
Dud, listen. _Where_ has Nicky flitted to? That’s the great question.”

“How should I know? He just plunked the wooden thing under my nose and
I plunked a dollar bill in his fist, and there you are!” Dudley could
be brief and expressive at times.

“Let’s go, Cara,” urged Babs. “I really must go, you know,” she
insisted.

“Oh, say,” interrupted Glenn. “Who was going to eat that box of
writing paper? Call the waiter. Here!” this was to a boy who stood
grinning behind the counter. “Where’s your best stationery——”

“If you are going to treat us, Glenn,” Cara cut in, “let’s select our
own. Do, please. Come along Babs. We’ll teach him not to be rash.
We’ll buy the very best,” and laughingly, she led Babs to the pretty
glass counter in the very back of the store where all sorts of
attractive things in stationery and powder boxes were gaudily
displayed.

A little later, armed each with a magazine that Dudley insisted upon
buying them, and the gold-edged blue-lined writing paper that Glenn
gladly paid for, they finally made their escape.

“Do let’s rush along,” begged Babs. “We must get to the lighthouse
before supper-time and I suppose they eat at six o’clock sharp,
government time,” she suggested gaily. “Oh, Cara, I am feeling better
every minute, aren’t you?”

“Yes, it’s the soda, the writing paper and the magazine. All cheerful
little things,” Cara answered, starting her car. “But say, Babby, did
you have any sort of inspiration when Dud told about _more_ wood
carving?”

“No, Cara, why?” asked Babs, breathlessly.

“I did.”

“You did. What?”

“I thought maybe, just maybe you know, that the boat model was
borrowed for a model.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You are not usually so stupid, Babby dear,” sighed Cara. “Can’t you
see? It wouldn’t really be stealing if friend Nicky took the little
boat for some one to copy, would it?”

“Cara!”

“Now, would it?”

“Not stealing,” said Babs slowly. “But who would want to copy it?”

“Stupid again. Whoever does the beautiful carving, of course.”

“Oh.” Babs fell into silence after that. She had not thought of such a
possibility and it sort of staggered her.

“Copy the model?” she said finally.

“Why not?” pressed Cara. “It was worth copying, wasn’t it?”

“It certainly was. Cara, you’re a wonder. I never would have thought
of such a thing,” Babs declared still a little jerky.

“Oh, yes, you would. I didn’t give you time. But don’t build your
hopes too high, dear. I may be all wrong,” drawled Cara.

“I hope you’re all right,” said Babs fervently. Then she stared hard
ahead, as the car cut its way through the heavy sand. She was
wondering. Nicky said he hadn’t taken the model—no, he said he hadn’t
stolen it.

“And wasn’t it queer,” Cara broke in on her thoughts, “that he, Nicky,
should fetch Dud another piece? Whoever cuts those out must be an
expert,” she promptly decided.

“Yes,” said Babs abstractedly.

“And Nicky’s like Hop-o-My-Thumb,” she added. “We just about get on
his track when he—hops.”

“Yes,” said Babs again.

“If I said you were handsome would you say yes, Babs?”

“Yes,” said her companion. Then they both burst out laughing.

“I knew I’d catch you. Well, you’re not handsome, not when you pucker
up your forehead that way, anyhow. Now, here we are on our way to the
lighthouse, and here’s where we get out and walk,” she went on. “I
suppose we’ll have to wait until morning if the captain is trimming
his lamp,” she finished, locking her car and then following Babs
through the deep sand to the little path that led along the beach to
the lighthouse.

A big, shaggy, friendly dog rushed out to them.

“Captain in?” Babs asked the dog.

“Whoo-of!” barked the animal playfully, licking Babs’ hand as an after
thought.

“Yes, he’s in,” said Cara. “I see his foot. See it sticking out there
in the bushes?” she directed, for the porch of the lighthouse was
surrounded by a stubby growth generously called bushes, and they could
see the outlines of a shoe among them.

There was the scuffling of a chair as the girls reached the funny
little home-made porch.

“Well, now,” declared the captain moving in his chair but not rising.
“Here you both are! How do? See, I’ve a game leg and can’t get up,” he
explained. “Slipped on the third step the other night. Ouch!” he
groaned as he moved the “game leg” unintentionally. “There ain’t
nuthin’ worse,” he declared still groaning.

“Hurt your foot?” Cara managed to say. “That’s too bad, Captain. You
need both your feet to climb up to the light.”

“Don’t I though? Find a place to sit down among those books. I’ve been
readin’ my head off, me and Mac” (he patted the dog affectionately)
“and it’s tough being stuck in a chair with a pretty sea like that
rolling under your very nose.”

“Yes, it must be,” agreed Babs. “But Captain Quiller. I’m sorry to be
in a hurry, but I have to be,” she sort of apologized. “Can you tell
me where Nicky has moved to?”

“Moved to? You mean flew to.” (It was the same sort of expression
Dudley had used.) “They’ve gone to the woods. Didn’t you know?”

“To the woods!” both girls exclaimed.

“Yessir. And sensible thing to do too. The woods is just the place for
them.” And Captain Quiller brought his cane down so hard and so near
his sore foot that he groaned anyhow, although he didn’t touch it.

“Where? What woods!” demanded Barbara impatiently.

“Well, now. Not so easy to locate from here seein’ as how it’s some
miles back. But he’ll be here, Nicky will. He’s my stand-by now,” the
captain declared proudly. “Depend more on him than I can on Pete.
Yessir, Nick is some boy.”

Barbara loved to hear him praise her little protégé. She didn’t
realize it, of course, but she was taking Nicky and his affairs to
heart just as grown folks take protégés and their affairs.

“Couldn’t we find their camp?” pressed Cara. “We really want to speak
to Nicky just as soon as we can.”

“By the time you would find him he would be due here likely,” answered
Captain Quiller. “Hope nothin’s wrong?”

“No, not exactly,” said Babs, “just a little mixed up.”




                             CHAPTER XXII

                          WASHINGTON ANSWERS


“We certainly are meeting difficulties,” remarked Cara as they left
the road to the lighthouse behind them. “Ruth would call them snags,
difficulties are different, aren’t they?”

“But imagine the Marcusis camping in the woods,” said Babs, ignoring
frivolity. “What did the captain say about some one being sick?”

“He didn’t say it, he caught himself in time. Seems as if there’s a
mystery in that somewhere,” said Cara more seriously.

“Why ever should there be a mystery in a person being sick? How
silly!”

“Well, we’ll soon know,” Cara assured her. “You can count on Captain
Quiller. We impressed him the night he scrambled in on my roof. Wasn’t
that too funny?”

“And we had on those absurd things!” Babs recalled. “You in your
bridal robes!”

“And you in your college robes! Say Babs, I wish you would sell me
that outfit,” Cara said suddenly. “I’d love to wear it once in a
while. I never intend to go to college, you know,” Cara admitted
indifferently, “so I’d like to pretend I had been there.”

“Sell it to you! You can have it, I don’t want it. I always feel as if
I do want to go to college— But then,” Babs checked herself, “I may go
to a special school for science. Dad says I have a scientific turn of
mind,” she declared, laughing heartily at the very idea.

“And now that you’ve gone in for heirlooms, samplers, etc., that
proves it,” remarked Cara dryly.

“And gone in for twin cousins. Do you suppose Miss Davis is a sort of
shadowy cousin to me?” asked Babs.

“Shadowy anyhow. She’s thin enough. But she’s nice. If only we can lay
hold of that miserable little Nicky and wring out of him the story of
the boat model.”

“Cara Burke!” exclaimed Babs, rebukingly. “You stop making fun of my
adopted brother. Didn’t you say I should adopt him?”

“Looks right now as if he would be the adopted son of Captain
Quiller,” went on Cara, for both girls were in that mood that made
them feel like saying silly things and laughing at them, as if they
were the very best jokes they had ever heard.

“I’m glad you have nothing more important to do than to drive me
around, Cara,” Babs remarked as she jumped out of the car. This was
Babs’ way of thanking her chum for her continuous attention.

“So am I,” chirped Cara. “Think what fun I’d miss if I did have
something more important to do.”

But presently she was gone, and Babs was running up the little patched
stone walk, a walk made of pieces of stone just scattered in the grass
at step lengths, so that one always wanted to play a game as she raced
along them. Babs called them her broken trail, and she always jumped
hardest on the big pointed stone that looked like a gray shawl in the
thick green grass.

She was almost happy. Things were promising to clear up. She and Cara
were going to the lighthouse exactly at eight o’clock. It would still
be daylight at that time, but Captain Quiller said Nicky would come
then to light his lamp, so high up in the tower that the glow could be
seen like a little candlelight’s flicker, to warn seamen away from the
dangerous point of sand. Once touching that sand-bar a craft would be
aground, and the light was to mark this danger and save it from such
peril.

Babs, hurrying on, had not quite reached the porch of her own home
now, but she could plainly see the inescapable Dora standing waiting
for her.

And she held another letter in her hand!

“What?” exclaimed Babs, ready to roar at the humor of it, “not another
letter, Dora?”

“Yes,” replied Dora solemnly, holding out a big envelope, “and it even
hasn’t a stamp on it. Marked ‘official business.’” One would think it
were a death notice the way Dora intoned that.

“Oh!” cried Babs grabbing the paper from her hands. “Quick, give it to
me! I know——”

“Don’t scratch me like that,” snapped Dora. “Surely, your old Aunt
hasn’t died and left you that money——”

“What Aunt? What money?” Babs didn’t know what she was saying, and she
didn’t care. She had the letter and was making tracks for the secrecy
of her own room.

Poor Dora! Disappointed again! Barbara Hale was not the girl she used
to be. There had been a time when she read her letters under Dora’s
very eyes. But now——

Up in her room Barbara was reading that letter from Washington, in a
perfect spasm of excitement. The spasm kept her still, and she made
her eyes read the words in spite of their rebellion. They wanted to
blink, to wink, to flicker, to flirt with the words. Eyes will act
like that when you press them too hard.

Babs was reading. And the “letter head” was from the secretary of the
United States. It informed Miss Barbara Hale that her letter
recommending Nickolas Marcusi for bravery had been received, and an
account of the incident had been fully investigated. The little boy
was certainly worthy of official commendation, the letter stated, for
not only had he done a brave act and suffered physical pain in doing
it, but he had set an example of bravery and nobility such as boys of
this great country would do well to appreciate. “Therefore——”

Barbara stopped reading. She wanted to know it all so badly she just
feared to find it out; she hated to have the secret a secret no
longer. Raising her violet eyes to her ceiling, always such a homely
ceiling but now seemingly heavenly, she drew in a sharp breath.

“Nicky!” she whispered ecstatically, “you do deserve it. You have
worked so hard!”

Again she followed the precious words. Yes, Nicky would be recommended
for bravery and the whole affair was to be brought to the attention of
the President.

“The President!” cried out Barbara. “Hooray! Daddy! Dora! Listen!” and
now the anxiously waiting maid was to hear the news at last.

“And Daddy isn’t home yet! Oh, dear!” wailed the excited girl. “How
shall I wait to tell him? Listen Dora.”

“I’m listenin’,” Dora reminded her dryly. “Whatever is it? Who’s
dead?”

“Dead? Who said any one was dead? It’s Nicky——”

“What’s happened to him now, Nick-kee,” Dora was contemptuous.

“Now, if you sneer at him like that I’ll not tell you a single word!”
threatened Babs, her cheeks flaming indignantly.

“Who’s sneering, I’d like to know?” retorted Dora, just as if she
didn’t know already.

“Well,” began Barbara, “when the government of the United States
thinks a boy is good enough and brave enough to be noticed, it seems
to me you and I,” she added this last when she remembered the overdue
wages, “you and I,” she repeated emphatically, “should at least
respect him.”

“Yes,” said Dora, and the word really meant no.

“Oh, all right, you don’t need to bother,” decided the excited one.
“I’m in a hurry anyhow. I hope supper is ready. I’m starved too. I’ve
got to phone Cara.” She was going toward the phone.

“I can’t see what good a fair is if you come home starved to death
from it,” snapped Dora. “Of course, your supper is ready. Am I ever
late? Not that there ain’t enough to hinder one——”

But Barbara was at the phone.

“Cara, Cara!” she could be heard to exclaim. “The most wonderful news!
From Washington! About Nicky. Oh, do hurry around——”

“Yes, a letter. It was here when I came home. Oh, here comes Dads. I
must tell him. See you in a few minutes? Yes, do hurry,” and Babs
banged the receiver on the hook and flew to the door.

Her father was just coming up the Trail but he didn’t dance over the
stones as Babs would have done. Yet, he too liked that distracting
stone walk. One could never think of trouble when treading it; just
stones. They demanded one’s entire attention.

Babs swung herself around her father’s neck—by her arms, of course—in
a way she had not lately been indulging in.

“Oh, Daddykinks!” she gurgled, lips pressed to his kindly cheeks.
“News from Washington. They answered my letter——”

“Of course they did. Why wouldn’t they?” the doctor interrupted dryly.
“Look who you are! Didn’t you get proud at the Community House this
afternoon?” He pressed her close to his mohair coat. “I did,” he
declared frankly. “With our sampler and our new relations——”

“But this. You see this isn’t for us; it’s for Nicky. And he hasn’t
anything else. Just sit down and read it,” she begged. “Do daddy,
please.”

“That supper you was talking about is pretty well spoiled,” put in the
grouchy Dora. “And it isn’t my fault. You understand that, I hope.”

“Yes, we understand that and it’s all right, thank you, Dora,” spoke
up the doctor authoritatively.

Then he and his daughter settled down deep into the big chair to enjoy
the news from Washington.




                            CHAPTER XXIII

                         PROLONGING THE AGONY


A small dark figure, like a queer sort of bug, could be seen at the
top of the grating that supported Beacon Light. That was Nicky. The
girls beneath were calling to him, Captain Quiller was shouting, but
beyond meaningless little words dropped down through the spiral frame,
no answer came to their entreaties.

They wanted him to come down. Captain Quiller insisted that the light
was all right and that he should come down.

But he didn’t. “In a minute,” they heard him promise. “I just want to
see what’s the matter with this.”

“With what?” demanded the captain. He was standing on that sore foot
defiantly, and his cane didn’t do much good either. “Ain’t nothin’ the
matter with that light,” he called up to the speck at the eye of the
beacon. “Come on down here! Can’t sleep up there, can you? Though he’d
like to, first rate,” the captain told the two impatient girls. “He’s
just daffy about that light.”

But after repeated appeals, and a broad hint from Cara that she had
good news for him, Nicky paid some attention.

“Good news?” he repeated. “What is it? Can’t you fetch it up?”

“Fetch it up?” Babs repeated this. “Why should we?”

“So’s you could see the light. It’s a dandy, and they’s steps. Come on
up,” he coaxed, leaning over the little railing expectantly.

“Can you beat that?” chuckled the captain. “Wants to show you the
light. Well, you better climb up. It’s the quickest way. No good news
ain’t goin’ to get him down ’till he’s ready to come. Take them steps.
They’re all right, only don’t get dizzy,” he warned them. They were
already on their way.

It was fun to walk up the queer steps, and Babs led the way.

“I feel like a roof painter,” joked Cara. “Where’s our paint brushes
and tin cans?”

But Babs was going straight up. She didn’t pause to look out over the
water as Cara was doing.

“Why don’t you look?” Cara begged her. “Did you ever see such a
wonderful view?”

“Haven’t time for views,” called Babs, for the noise of the ocean made
calling necessary.

Finally, they both reached the top, and on the little platform they
found Nicky. His eyes were dancing in his head, and he was so anxious
to tell them everything about the light at once, that Babs despaired
of getting his attention at all.

“We can see all this any time,” she insisted. “Don’t you see, Nicky, I
have a letter from Washington,” she began almost hopelessly.

“Yeah?” spoke the boy.

“About you.”

“About me?” He was alarmed now. “What about me an’ Washington?”

“Well, if you’ll just climb down I’ll tell you,” promised Babs,
determined to get him to a less distracting spot. “We’ll go first, and
you come right straight along.”

Perhaps his alarm accounted for his final obedience, but at last he
did condescend to come down.

And it was on Captain Quiller’s porch that Babs unfolded her story.
The setting, Cara thought, was like a scene in a play. The old captain
in the funny old armchair with a telegraph-wire glass on each chair
leg. Then Nicky—he looked like a picture that might have been found
somewhere in Europe. He was picturesquely ragged, as Cara saw him. His
brown skin toned in with the faded brown khaki garments he wore, his
one suspender doing valiant duty across his small shoulder.

His hair was black and too long for a boy, but it curled up jauntily,
and made the little fellow look quite handsome, both girls thought.

“You come here, son,” the captain ordered. “You’re worse than a
grasshopper. Can’t pin you down, nohow. There, you sit right here,” he
indicated the arm of the chair, and the boy awkwardly perched himself
upon it.

Nicky’s fear at anything official had now left him. He instinctively
knew that there was nothing wrong. They wouldn’t be smiling and happy
had there been.

Babs tried to explain about the letter but it was hard work. Smart as
the youngster was he couldn’t understand why falling off a bicycle,
with a can of kerosene oil, was anything to be proud of.

“But you saved the light from going out,” Cara explained. “If the
light had gone out in the storm, ships might have been wrecked and
lives lost.”

“And the _Laurania_ was just off shore,” spoke up the captain. “She’s
a millionaire’s yacht and they carry quite a crew.” He clapped his
hand on Nicky’s shoulder and it was easy to tell just how thick or
thin the boy’s old shirt was.

“Well, anyhow,” Babs began again, “Washington has answered our letter
and maybe you’ll get a medal.”

“A medal!” grinned Nicky. “What good is a medal?”

“Not much, son,” agreed the captain, strange to say. “But then, it’s a
mighty good thing to have friends at Washington. There’s all-powerful
people there,” and Nicky’s shoulder again responded under Captain
Quiller’s fatherly pat. It whacked.

“Oh, I know!” gasped Babs. “I know—something.”

“What? Don’t choke on it. What is it?” asked Cara.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t say it right out, but you know, we’re all your
friends, don’t you Nicky?” she began cautiously.

“Sure.” Nicky wasted no sentiment.

“Then, Captain Quiller, why couldn’t we ask to get Nicky’s father out?
He never did a thing wrong.”

“Betchure life he didn’t,” proclaimed the small son, loudly and
emphatically.

“No, he didn’t do it,” confirmed Captain Quiller. “That’s been a
shame, that has.” He avoided saying anything more definite, but they
all knew he meant it had been and still was a shame to hold Nicky’s
father in jail.

“Then, don’t you see?” gurgled Babs. She was too excited to be
explicit. “Don’t you see, that now Washington would listen to us and
we could ask?”

“Who’s Washington?” asked Nicky, quite practically.

“Oh, you know I mean the officials at Washington, of course,” Babs
answered petulantly.

“I think that’s just a wonderful idea,” declared Cara, jumping up to
get nearer her chum. “Babs, you’re too smart to live. Take care you
don’t die or something.”

But Barbara Hale wasn’t joking; she was very much in earnest, and in
less time than she could have thought it all out, she and Captain
Quiller had come to a decision.

Of course, Nicky and Cara got a few words in edgewise, but they were
mostly very little words and didn’t take long to say, for the way Babs
and the old captain talked was simply prodigious.

“Aren’t you happy? Aren’t you glad, Nicky?” she demanded to know
finally, for as a matter of fact the boy wasn’t showing any enthusiasm
at all.

“About what?” he wanted to know. Wasn’t he tantalizing?

“That we’re going to get your father home,” Babs declared
convincingly.

“How can you tell?” the boy cross-questioned.

“Oh, Nicky Marcusi!” exclaimed Cara quite angrily. “You’re the
queerest duck. Don’t you see that Barbara has made the officials
commend you, and they have her name on file and they’ll read any
letter she writes them? Then, as Captain Quiller says, they’ll get a
whole lot of signatures, and they’ll investigate your father’s case.
Can’t you understand that?”

Nicky had left the arm of the captain’s chair and was playing with the
dog’s left ear. He raised his head now, dropped the dog’s ear and
looked at Barbara.

“I allus knowed you was smart,” he said simply, “you kin tell fresh
eggs just by touchin’ them.”

Every one roared laughing at that, but they understood what he meant.
He meant that his first acquaintance with Barbara’s cleverness came
through his experience in the egg business. He brought her eggs to buy
and she just took them in her hand and said:

“Yes, these are fresh.”

That showed how smart she was, to Nicky.

So why shouldn’t she make the Washington officials believe in his
father’s innocence after that? Surely one matter was as simple as the
other, to a small boy.

“Well, son,” said the captain, when he had stopped puffing over the
joke, “since you don’t care for medals we’ll see what we can do for
you in pardons.”

“He don’t have to be pardoned, because he didn’t do anything wrong,”
cried the child indignantly. He always flared up when his father’s
trouble was mentioned.

“Well, that’s so. But anyway we’ll go ahead. Now girls, are you
satisfied?” the captain wanted to know, for Babs and Cara plainly had
something else to say.

“Oh, yes, Captain,” Babs answered. “We really didn’t come so much
about the letter. You see, I only just now thought of—of Nicky’s
father,” she confessed.

“I see,” said Captain Quiller, expectantly. Then he waited.

“But there is something else,” went on Babs. “I hadn’t told _you_
Captain, because I just didn’t get a chance to.”

“Things did pile up pretty quickly,” he agreed. “Like a squall, when
we wouldn’t expect one,” he chuckled. He always talked of the sea even
when there was nothing to be said about it.

“Yes. But this is different. I’ll have to ask Nicky.” Barbara said
this in apology to their host. “Nicky,” she began as severely as she
could, “I’ve got to know this very minute about that boat model. Where
is it?”

“You can’t,” the boy answered crisply.

“But I’ve got to! I’m nearly crazy about it. Don’t you know you’re
blamed for stealing it?” Babs blurted out.

“I told you I didn’t.”

Cara was whispering to the captain, so that they didn’t once interrupt
the other two.

“I know you told me,” Barbara repeated, “but what good does that do?
Miss Davis is almost sick in bed over it, and nobody, but you and me,
knew where it was hid. Now _who_ took it?”

“I can’t tell you yet. But I will soon,” the boy promised. This time
he showed some feeling. He was plainly sorry not to be able to oblige
this particularly good friend, by telling her how the boat model had
disappeared.

“Soon?” exclaimed Cara, who could no longer keep quiet. “Don’t you
see, Nicky, that Barbara is really worried to death about that model?”

“But I promised. I got to keep a promise, ain’t I, Cap?”

“Well, that depends on what sort of promise it was. If it was a
foolish one——” the captain began.

“It wasn’t. I got five dollars for it,” declared the youngster,
joyfully.

“You got five dollars for it! Five dollars for hiding
somebody’s—crime!” gasped Babs. “Oh, Nicky! How could you?”

“’Twasn’t either a crime. It’s all right. You just have to wait,
that’s all. Today’s Wednesday and you’ll know Friday. What’s the
matter with that?” Nicky wanted to know.

“You don’t seem to understand,” pleaded Barbara, almost in despair. “I
just have to know tonight. I promised Miss Davis I’d surely tell her
tonight. Nicky, I’ll give you five dollars to give back to whoever
bought your promise. You shouldn’t have taken money for a thing like
that,” she insisted.

“Why shouldn’t I? We had to move, didn’t we?” A boy is so literal he
can never see why girls are sentimental.

“Now see here,” spoke up the captain. “Let’s see what’s the trouble.
You say a ship model was taken from the Community House?”

“Yes,” answered both Cara and Babs.

“And Nicky knows who took it?”

“Sure I do,” and the boy was actually smiling.

“And you promised not to tell ’till Friday?” the man continued.

“That’s it,” declared Nicky gladly. “I can tell Friday.”

“And you know you’re a government man now, Nick,” the captain reminded
him. “What you say you stick to. Understand that?”

“I allus do that,” the boy spoke up a little saucily.

“That’s the way to talk; fine,” agreed the Captain. “Now, you’ll say
that ship model is safe, O.K.?”

“Cer-tain-ly.” A long word for Nicky.

Captain Quiller looked at the girls whose faces were set with an
impatient, anxious expression.

“Then, it seems to me,” he said like a judge, “you girls will have to
wait until Friday.”

“Oh, how can we?” wailed Barbara. “Think of Miss Davis.”

“When Bell Davis hears her _Santa Maria_ is safe,” said the seaman
decidedly, “she’ll be so glad she won’t worry about anything else. I
know Bell Davis and her ship model too,” he finished, and so the girls
were obliged to be content with that. But they were not content at
all.




                             CHAPTER XXIV

                          SCOUTS IN THE WOOD


“You were wise, dear, not to press the boy further. I think he had
about as much as a small boy’s head could carry, as it was.”

So spoke Dr. Hale to Barbara, late that night, after Barbara had told
him the whole story of her complicated interest in Nicky and his
family. She was sitting on the floor beside him, on the old braided
rug, her head against his knee so that he might stroke it
reassuringly.

“And you’ve forgiven me for not telling you before, Dads? You see, I
knew you wouldn’t want me to bother about such things, and I felt that
once I did get into it I would have to go through with it,” she
explained. “But, you have no idea what a bother it has been. Whew!”
She blew the word out explosively. “I feel like a Sherlock Holmes.”

“Yes, it is surprising what difficulties some poor people have to
struggle against and yet what fine characters they develop. If they
don’t get sour they are sure to remain permanently strong; sort of a
concentrated character, if you know what I mean,” her father pointed
out to her.

“Yes, I think I understand, sort of boiled down,” she answered,
laughingly.

“Exactly.” And they both laughed over the illustration.

“But you see, Dad, I’ve got to find his mother and talk to her. I
couldn’t be satisfied with so small a boy’s word on all this. Besides,
there’s her husband’s pardon. I ought to talk to her about it, don’t
you think so?”

“Yes, decidedly. Nicky is clever enough but as you say, he’s nothing
but an ignorant little boy, and it wouldn’t be right to trust too much
to him,” decided Dr. Hale.

“You see, I couldn’t possibly say another word to him tonight after
the Washington letter and the ship model and everything,” went on
Barbara seriously. “If I had so much as asked where their camp was,
I’m sure he would have run away. He seemed to hate it all, as it was.
Bashful you know, Dads,” Barbara explained.

“Yes, he would be. But I guess you’ve made him happy, just the same,”
her father assured her. “To get that letter from Washington would have
set some boys up proudly for the rest of their lives.”

“Oh, you couldn’t make Nicky proud,” Babs declared. “You see,
he’s—boiled down.” This expression had become Babs’ special joke.

When they settled down to seriousness after that, it was decided that
Babs and Cara should again visit the lighthouse and get from Captain
Quiller what directions they could in hopes of finding the camp in the
woods.

“And I’ll go along with you,” promised her father, “for a number of
reasons.”

But it was actually two days later before the all-important trip could
be made. The doctor had been called out of town, the captain had to
have time to make sure he was divulging no secret that should have
been withheld, and it took him a day to go out to the woods to see
Mrs. Marcusi, as he could only leave his post at a certain hour of the
afternoon. So Babs and Cara lived somehow, and Miss Davis was so
relieved to be assured her model was safe, she really was, as Cara
said, “quite sweet about it.”

All week long the Community House “fair,” as the exhibit was being
called by the country folks, was in progress, and as Cara predicted,
the girls’ committee got together again and worked even more
enthusiastically than at first.

It must be said in all fairness to Esther and Louise that they did all
they could to make amends for their slight to Barbara. They explained
quite frankly that their folks didn’t want them to have anything to do
with the foreigners, because, as Louise put it, “they didn’t know
anything about them.”

This was not unreasonable, Cara made Babs see that, because summer
folks have to be careful whom they associate with. Both Cara and Babs
laughed over the foolish idea that summer folks had to be more
carefully guarded than winter folks—those who lived at Sea Cosset the
year around—but Babs was too busy with other and more important
affairs to worry over such trifles.

Her heart was singing these days, because she was so expectant.
Something wonderful was about to happen. She was going to find out who
carved the beautiful wooden candlesticks, and why Nicky’s folks were
afraid of being known to strangers. This would surely satisfy her
thirst for adventure.

“I feel just as if it were the day before Christmas,” she told Cara,
“and I was waiting for Santa Claus.”

“I feel as if it were the day after Christmas,” Cara put in, “and that
he had brought me a bag of golden promises.”

So the girls flitted from their homes to the Community House, gaily
helping the ladies with the dusting and rearranging of the articles
still left to be voted upon later; and it was all good fun.

Mrs. Brownell’s table was awarded first prize, it had to be or she
would have gone to bed with nervous prostration. But it really was a
fine antique. As to quilts——

“They won’t get them all decided upon before the holidays,” Ruth
Harrison declared, “and maybe they’ll have to hold another Old Home
Week to give the prizes then.”

The smaller articles, in which class Babs’ sampler had been placed,
were to be voted upon on the very last day, Saturday, and Miss Davis
wondered about her model.

“You see,” she confided, “I expect sister home Friday, that’s tomorrow
night. And if ever I lay my eyes on that little boat again I don’t
think I’d risk taking it out of the house. Sometimes I’m just as
worried as ever——”

“I’m sure it’s safe,” Barbara told her again, for times beyond
counting, “and maybe you could get it in the contest after all,” she
cheered the little lady.

“I’d love to. It is so handsome! Well, you’ve done your best and I’m
getting more fond of you every day,” declared the dainty little Miss
Davis, with a pardonable show of affection for her little sampler
relation.

Barbara loved that feeling of relationship, however remote it was, for
she had been much alone since her Aunt Katherine moved away out West,
and there was after that no woman but the well-meaning Dora to offer
her protection. It was all well enough to be considered different from
other girls, to have her father tell her gallantly that she was almost
as good as a boy, to have boys call her a pal and a chum and flatter
her in their favorable comparisons, not a bit like other girls; but a
girl needs a woman’s sure arm around her; sometimes.

She wants to be told she just must not do things she insists upon
doing. In a word she cannot comfortably carry all her own
responsibility. And Barbara knew this well. She had tried it out and
found the way very lonely. It would be such fun now to have the
Twinnie Davises to run to. Cousins, she would call them of course.

It so happened that this was the week that Dudley Burke and Glenn
Gaynor left for camp. So much always happens in the late summer. The
night before they left the boys took all the girls out, _all_ the
girls that the girls could gather up. And they had a wonderful time,
from sodas at Hills, to movies at the Ritz, after which delightful
hours were spent upon the porch of a Monmouth hotel, where the party
too young and too informal to take part, listened to the orchestra and
watched the dancing, from the great ocean-front porches. In a few more
years they might take part in this, but just this summer Mrs. Burke
was acting as chaperon and they were glad to be allowed to look on.
Otherwise the party might not have remained so late on the wonderful
hotel porch; that is, they could not have done so but for the
all-important chaperonage.

Friday morning came at last, and they were going in search of that
camp in the woods.

“I’m so thrilled,” Cara confessed, “I can hardly breathe. I think I
have real heart disease.”

“Not exactly heart disease,” said Dr. Hale, “but curiosity illness. It
has a choking habit.”

Babs, Cara, and Dr. Hale were in Cara’s touring car, and she was
driving. The dignified doctor tried to spread himself all over the
back seat; for the two girls, of course, were together in front. They
were going to Cosmo Woods. Captain Quiller had not only given them
full and detailed directions, but he had drawn them a map of the
outlying territory.

“You could easily tell he was a sailor,” commented Barbara. “Just look
at the lines. They’re like the zone lines in an old geography.”

It wasn’t far to Cosmo Woods but it was hard to get there. After
leaving the lovely ocean boulevard they took a strip of road that
wound around the lake. Then, they went out on a back road that cut
through a farming district. There were even some hills, uncommon for
ocean territory, and when their car would reach the top of one of
these there wouldn’t be a mark of any kind to distinguish the end of
the hill from the beginning. Such a sameness, so little variety, a few
scattered houses! Assuredly the sea-shore is lovely—just at the sea’s
shore. But not inland.

“Let’s see that chart,” the doctor asked Barbara when Cara turned away
from the main road onto what might charitably be called a lane. “I
expect I’ll need a mariner’s compass, but let’s take a look at it
anyhow.”

Babs handed over the penciled paper.

“Yes, I guess this is right,” the doctor announced, after a brief
survey. “But we’ll probably soon have to get out and walk.”

“Yes, we walk from the scrub pines,” Babs said. “And see! There they
are! They’re the only pines around. These trees are everything else,
but not pines. Why don’t they call them Scrubbys?”

So presently the car had been parked in a little clearance, safely
locked, and the three scouts went on.

“If we see a camp,” said Cara, after they had decided that one way was
a path newly trodden and the other wasn’t, “perhaps Babs had better go
ahead and you and I, doctor, will sort of hang behind. They may still
be so afraid they might take to the trees.”

“Fine idea,” assented Dr. Hale, who loved the woods so thoroughly that
he seemed to care as much about a clump of ferns as about finding the
elusive Marcusis.

Through a little tunnel of wild-grape vines they managed to pass,
while the doctor led and brushed the most impertinent brambles and
vines out of the girls’ way.

Then Babs grasped Cara’s arm.

“Look!” she exclaimed. “There they are! Just look!”

“Oh, how funny!” Cara said excitedly. “Did you ever see anything—so
funny!”

They were looking at the Italians’ camp. It was made up of three old
automobiles, or parts of automobiles that could never be expected to
turn a wheel again. For the wheels were gone. But the tops were there
and in these the little family had taken refuge. Even from the
distance where the scouts had stopped little Vicky could be seen. She
was swinging gaily on a swing made of rope, hanging from a sturdy
tree; and a very good swing it was indeed, for any little girl to
enjoy.

A woman, whom Babs recognized as Nicky’s mother, was cooking something
over a camp kettle. The fire was set in a stone oven and appeared
mighty attractive to Dr. Hale; so he said.

“Not a bad camp at that,” he remarked. “And the best thing in the
world for that family. Just see how they manage. Obstacles become
useful tools in their willing hands.”

“Yes, look at the home-made tent built on to the side of that old
car,” directed Cara. “I should think it would be lovely under that.”

“I wish I could see Nicky,” whispered Babs a little anxiously. They
were behind bushes that hid them completely from any one who might be
looking out at the camp.

“There he is!” declared Cara. “Look! He’s doing something with that
old car, the one with wheels on.”

“Yes, so he is,” exclaimed Babs. “Now I’ll go over and talk to him.
You stay here a few minutes.”

“Look out for dogs,” cautioned her father. But Babs knew that the
Marcusis had no dog when she went to their place over the tracks, and
it wasn’t likely they would have one now to attract attention to their
camp in the woods.

No, they had no dogs.




                             CHAPTER XXV

                             A REVELATION


Nicky saw Babs quickly as she stepped out from the shrubbery, and he
hailed her joyfully, running towards her.

“Hello, Miss Barbara!” he called gaily, which was pretty good for
Nicky. He had never called her “Miss Barbara” before. “Come on over!
It’s all right. You can come. Cap Quiller told my folks all about
you.”

He was saying this as he came towards Barbara, and now he saw the
doctor and Cara.

“They can come too,” he said, grinning happily. “Tell them to come
along.”

But there was no need to do so for Cara was already hurrying up to
Barbara, and the doctor was not far behind her.

“Are you sure your mother won’t mind?” Babs asked, anxiously.

“Nope; she’s glad. We’re glad to have a doctor,” said Nicky wagging
his head.

“Anybody sick?” asked Dr. Hale.

“Not very. Come on. Mother sees us,” said Nicky. He was very busy with
his social duties, and seemed a little excited.

But a few minutes later all three strangers were in front of the camp.
The old grandmother, recognizing Barbara, was busy getting them boxes
to sit on, and she appeared pleased to receive the visitors. Little
Vicky instantly ran over to Cara and grabbed her hand. Perhaps she was
remembering the ice-cream so bountifully served her at Cara’s party.

Barbara, considering herself spokesman for the delegation, had stepped
up nearer the tent, when some one crossed before the open space inside
the canvas.

Her heart jumped! Who could that be? It was a man, or a big boy! Could
he be Nicky’s father?

The shadow appeared again, and this time it stopped directly in the
center of the door way.

“Oh,” gasped Babs. “I didn’t know——”

But she could not utter another syllable, for there stood before her a
young Italian, a young man or at least a full-grown boy. He was
handsome, that should be said at once, for Barbara had instantly
decided the point, and he was wearing a blouse of brilliant blue, and
a tam-o’-shanter hat of black velvet. So picturesque!

More important than all this, he was holding in his hand an unfinished
wooden ship model!

“Oh!” gasped Babs again. “I beg your pardon.”

“It is all right,” replied the young man in splendid English. “We must
get Nickolas to introduce us. I hope your friends will come up to our
poor quarters.” He put the model down carefully and looked about for
Nicky.

The boy was there beside them almost instantly, and Dr. Hale with Cara
had also come up to the tent.

“He’s my cousin Ben,” began Nicky. But his mother interrupted him.

“He is our cousin Benato,” she said, “and he is an artist. You see, he
was sick.” She too spoke English carefully, and now as she stood
beside the young man in the artist’s costume it was easy to decide
that he was her relation, for they looked much alike.

“Sit down, sit down,” begged the polite old grandmother. She was not
going to have her boxes empty when company came like that.

“And have you been ill, young man?” Dr. Hale asked, filling in a
rather embarrassed pause.

“Yes, Sir,” replied Benato. “And I had to hide away. They told me I
should be sent back to Europe if I did not get cured in six months,”
the artist said. “I could not get well by the railroad, but I am
better since I came here. Would you tell me, Sir?” he asked,
indicating he wanted to know from Dr. Hale just what his condition
actually was.

It was a relief to both Babs and Cara when Benato and Dr. Hale entered
the tent and left them to talk with Nicky.

“The ship model——” began Babs.

“He can make anything,” the boy interrupted proudly, “and when I told
him about the other, Miss Davis’ you know” (he stumbled over that),
“he got out his books and copied one. He is making it for you,” Nicky
told Barbara, just a little shyly.

“For me?” exclaimed Barbara, in surprise.

“Yes, he knows you are our friend,” attested Nicky manfully.

“What did you say his name was? Isn’t he perfectly stunning?” Cara
coupled her questions without waiting for an answer.

“His name is Benato Sartello, but I call him Ben,” said Nicky. “He was
awful sick at first and used to hide away. ’Fraid they would come and
take him away like they did——”

“I know,” Barbara stopped him. She could never let the boy refer
directly to his father in jail.

“Yes,” chimed in Cara, “they do send folks back to other countries if
they are not well when they come here. Dad had a wonderful chemist and
he was deported.”

“But Ben is like well now,” declared Nicky quickly.

“He no more sick ever,” added the grandmother clasping her hands
prayfully. They seemed very positive that Benato was now cured.

“This camping is very healthy for you all,” said Babs to Nicky’s
mother. She felt ill at ease among them now, as if she had penetrated
their sanctuary without invitation, and so she couldn’t talk
naturally.

“Yes,” said the mother, “the wood is good always, clean and—” she
looked about her gratefully—“we could be happy here if——”

“Didn’t Nicky tell you about Washington? The government, you know?”
Babs asked eagerly then.

“Oh, yes. That is good,” said Mrs. Marcusi. “My man did no wrong. They
take him away——”

“But you’ll see them bring him back again,” interrupted Babs,
unwilling to let even Mrs. Marcusi talk of their trouble. “You have a
splendid boy in Nicky,” she attested fondly.

“A very good boy. He tells me how good you are——”

“Oh, say, Mother,” objected the boy. “That’s no good.” (He meant the
compliments, of course.) “They want to know about Ben, don’t you?”
Nicky was wiser than he realized.

“He does such beautiful work,” began Cara immediately introducing that
interesting subject.

“Vera fine. He could sell many pieces but he’s afraid. So Nicky take
it to you,” the mother explained. “When he’s well he can make plenty
of money.” She had wonderful brown eyes like Vicky’s, and her hair
fell about her face as in the Madonna’s pictures. Both Babs and Cara
looked at her in admiration, and wondered how it was that some women
were so beautifully brave.

Dr. Hale was emerging from the tent now, and his face, as well as the
smile that was spread over Benato’s, told the good news before a word
was spoken.

“Sound as a dollar,” said the doctor. “No trouble here at all.” He
swept his hand across the young man’s chest. “And this fresh air out
here is the very thing.” He was talking to Mrs. Marcusi now. “This is
good for all of you. Where ever did you get those?” he asked Nicky,
indicating the maimed automobiles being used as the family quarters.

“We have a friend who keeps a graveyard,” said the boy. “You know,
they call them dead ones and they take all the good parts out. He gave
us the tops and—” (he turned to Babs sharply) “that was what I had to
have the five dollars for. To buy the canvas for Ben’s tent. He had to
have it,” he insisted, apparently happy that Barbara, his friend,
could understand at last about that trying complication.

“We could get you lots of orders for carved pieces,” Cara told Benato,
“if you could make them up.” She had not addressed him directly
before, and seemed a little embarrassed at doing so now.

“Thank you, Miss,” answered the artist. “I love to work. I came to
America to work and now I shall go out, perhaps to New York.” His
handsome face was alight with happiness.

“Oh, no, no, no!” exclaimed both women.

“Not to New York, Benato,” implored Mrs. Marcusi. “They might take you
away on the ship.”

“Madam,” said Dr. Hale in his best professional tone, “I shall give
him a certificate, a paper, you know, that will protect him from
interference.”

At that the older woman fell upon her knees and grasped the doctor’s
hand to press it to her lips.

“T’ank you! T’ank you!” she sobbed. “Benato is vera good boy. He work
hard. He must stay——”

“He will, he will,” Dr. Hale checked her outburst, “and we are going
to see about bringing your son back, also,” he told the old mother.
This occasioned another shower of kisses for the doctor’s hands; and
their words piled up like little firecrackers that kept popping from
Italian into a kind of English, the only kind excited old Italian
women could give utterance to.

Benato was talking quietly to Nicky. He had his hand affectionately
upon the boy’s shoulder, and he kept urging him to do something that
Nicky was objecting to.

Cara and Babs were watching them while Dr. Hale was talking to the
women. Finally Benato spoke.

“Did you know that Nicky can carve also?” he asked the girls, smiling
broadly as he spoke to them.

“Nicky carve!” both exclaimed.

“He has talent. He helps me and he works like a man; all night if we
must hurry,” declared the cousin proudly. He seemed very fond of his
small cousin Nicky.

“Lov-ell-ly!” breathed Cara, to whom the news brought a vision of
little Nicky as an artist. Nicky, the obscure Italian boy, whom they
had been talking about adopting. How absurd! And this splendid young
man, Benato, was the person who had been hiding behind the poverty of
the Marcusi home. And the girls talked of “black handers!”

She could not help smiling when she thought of it all. How unfair it
is to judge people merely by appearances? What a bright future might
be in store for these two cousins! Obscure indeed!

“And you don’t need to be afraid of the health authorities,” Dr. Hale
told Benato, turning from his talk with the women. “They are fair, you
know. They would examine you and they would find you sound. You have
done wonders with your exercise and diet. Keep it up and live out
here. When you do go to the city spend all the time you can in the
parks,” the doctor advised. “We all need the air but a boy like you
_must_ have it,” he urged most emphatically.

“Yes sir,” replied the artist deferentially. “And I thank you. We did
not know how to reach a doctor until Nicky told us you were our
friend. You have made us all happy,” he declared, gratefully.

There was more hand-kissing from the women, and Cara whispered to Babs
that they had better be going when she noticed the old grandmother
mopping her brown face with her browner apron. She, Cara, didn’t want
both her cheeks kissed the way foreigners do it.

And now Babs was talking to Nicky. Of course she had to know about
Miss Davis’ model.

“You can come right along with us,” she told the boy. “There’s plenty
of room in the car, and, Nicky, I just must tell Miss Davis as quickly
as _you_ tell me. She has been so good to wait, and you don’t know
what it has meant to her,” she pointed out sensibly.

“Yes, I do,” the boy declared. “But I couldn’t help it. A feller’s got
to keep his word, ain’t he?”

Babs admitted that he had, while she included in her hopes for Nicky’s
artistic training, some good, plain education in the simple lines of
grammatical English.

Amid a perfect shower of protestations of their gratitude, the
Italians finally allowed the Americans to get into their car, while
Nicky went along to tell them about the lost ship model. For this was
Friday, and Friday he could tell.




                             CHAPTER XXVI

                             TUMBLING IN


“Your sister took it,” said Nicky simply, as the whole party stood in
Miss Davis’ parlor waiting to hear.

“My sister—took it!” Miss Isabel Davis could scarcely articulate; she
was too surprised.

“Yep. She said _you_ wanted to show it and _she_ didn’t. She said it
was hers too, and she gave me five dollars not to tell.” This last
admission caused the boy to flush a little under his dark skin, for
the taking of that “hush money” had worried Nicky considerably.

“And Miss Davis’s sister knew _that_ you knew where we hid it?” Babs
asked in tone, but not exactly in words. “How did she know that?”

“Please sit down,” begged the hostess excitedly. “I am so flustered.
Sister is coming home on this train. There’s the taxi——”

And it rumbled up to the door.

Just what was said after that was pretty hard to keep track of
because, not only was every one talking at once but every one was so
happy each just seemed to bubble up in a perfect torrent of
excitement.

“It was all right, wasn’t it, Sister?” the newly arrived Miss Davis,
the other twin, was asking Miss Isabel Davis, “I was too proud to have
our heirloom shown to a—mob,” she stated. “But I was wrong. You were
right,” she admitted to her sister. “It would have been an honor to
have had our _Santa Maria_ among those other heirlooms. And there was
no common crowd. I’ve read the papers every day and I hope we can get
our ship in before it closes. I’d love to have it there.”

“You can,” said Dr. Hale. “I’ll see about that. I’m on the final
committee.”

“But where did you hide it?” asked the dazed Miss Isabel, addressing
her sister.

“I didn’t hide it at all,” the sister replied. “I put it just where it
belonged, in the cabinet.”

“In the cabinet!” exclaimed Babs. “And they were blaming Nicky——”

“In the cabinet!” repeated Miss Isabel, breathlessly, making straight
for the tall mahogany desk that had a glass compartment at the top.

“You could have found it if you had looked, Sister,” the other twin
told her. “And you didn’t even ask me about it.”

“I didn’t dare to, I was so worried.” Miss Isabel stood looking at the
vague lines of the ship model behind the glass door. “Well! Well! And
that was there all the time! What a foolish old woman I am!”

“But you see, Nicky was wise after all,” put in Babs. “He got that
precious five dollars——”

“And here’s five more.” Miss Isabel ran her hand in her pocket and
soon held out a bill. “He deserves it. I owe it to him. Take it, son,
and you’re a fine little man.” She couldn’t just think of anything
more complimentary to say, and her eyes were swimming.

Five dollars more! That meant a lot to Nicky, and he undertook to fold
the precious bill so carefully that Cara wondered where he was going
to put it. She watched. The others were all talking again, and Nicky
noticed her interest.

“See?” he said, taking from his magic pocket, that never leaked in
spite of his tatters, a carved peach pit. “I did that,” he admitted
shyly, opening the pit and placing the finely folded bill in the
center.

“And I’m just telling sister about your sampler,” piped up Miss Isabel
to Babs. “And how it brought about our relationship. Isn’t this too
wonderful,” she impulsively threw her arms around Babs, “to have
cousins! We are going to be cousins——”

“Sampler cousins,” joked Babs, who was almost as dazed as was Miss
Isabel. But she had never for a moment lost faith in Nicky, so the
establishment of his honesty did not at all surprise her. The idea of
the twins stealing their own boat model! That was funny!

“And just wait until you see mine,” she told the ladies. “You won’t be
the only ones in _our_ family,” she stressed the pronoun, “with a
model of Columbus’ ship. _Our_ artists are making me one.”

“And I’ll have them make me the _Pinta_,” declared Cara. “You know,
the companion ship to the _Santa Maria_.”

“And maybe we can complete the fleet by getting me the Nina,” joined
in Dr. Hale, laughing heartily.

“The _Santa Maria_!” said the twins.

“The _Nina_,” said Dr. Hale.

“And the _Pinta_,” finished Cara.

“The whole float,” chuckled Nicky. “Sure we can make them. Ben’s good
at ship models.”

Cara was thrilled, she admitted.

“I never had so much fun in all my life,” she told Babs,
enthusiastically. “I just can’t wait to see the other girls’ faces
when they hear. Them and their black handers,” she choked, swinging
around toward Nicky who was at the door.

“Here!” called out one of the twins, “you must wait for tea. It won’t
take a minute. Come back here, Nickolas——”

“I gotta go,” sang back the boy who was waiting for nothing, neither
tea, cookies, nor even an auto ride. He was flying back to camp with
the five-dollar bill crammed into the peach pit.

“Talk about society,” whispered Cara to Babs, as a little later they
sipped their tea from the beautiful old china cups, with the deep
garnet gold-rimmed bands, “this beats even a house party. Aren’t the
twinnies lovely?”

“But wasn’t that a wonderful surprise? To find the model just where it
belonged, and to think that any one could ever suspect——”

“Your Nicky,” finished Cara. “That was mean. But we knew, didn’t we?”
she insisted loyally, glancing around her happily, for the scene with
the old ladies and the doctor was what Ruth would have called
“quaint.”

And speaking of Ruth, it was she who led the cheering squad next day
at the Community House when first prize was awarded to the Misses
Davis’ entry, the ship model of the famous old Columbus boat, the
_Santa Maria_.

Nicky was there but no one saw him. He was perched on the piece of
lattice where the vines were so thick he had to tear them apart to
peek into the room. And if he had stirred suddenly he might have
spilled himself in, for the queer window was built high in the side
wall of the room, and it was wide open. No one could possibly have
seen Nicky—he had a grandstand seat, only he had to stand up.

It took a long time to settle all the prizes for quilts and cushions
and lamp shades, and as Cara said, it was a real blessing they had not
thought of nightgowns. Or maybe it was Ruth who said that, but at any
rate, the girls’ department had a good laugh over the idea, for such a
show would indeed have been too funny for words. Imagine the big
muslin high-necked, long-sleeved gowns in these days of dainty silks
and cobwebby lingerie.

“There comes your sampler,” Esther told Barbara, as one of the ladies
stepped forward with the framed sampler in her hand.

The chairwoman, Mrs. Winters, took it and made quite a speech about
its wonderful handwork. She declared it was a magnificent sample of
early American needlework, and that it was well worthy of a first
prize. This she then awarded the blushing Barbara, and just as Barbara
turned again towards the audience a cheer, a boyish cheer, came in
through the window.

“Hurrah!” shouted Nicky, and every one turned around.

The next moment a boy came tumbling down! For Nicky, in his enthusiasm
had put his head in too far!

“Land sakes!”

“Mercy me!”

“What’s that!”

“A boy!” came in a succession of exclamations from the astonished
women. They scurried around as if a mouse had crawled into the room.

“Nicky!” screamed Barbara, “look out for Mrs. Brownell’s table.”

“I’m in me bare feet,” answered the embarrassed boy, “an’ they can’t
scratch.”

Then Dr. Hale dragged Nicky forward—he had to drag him literally, for
the boy wanted very much to escape. He told the astonished crowd
something of the recent history of the Marcusi family and Nicky’s
brilliant prospects.

“And you know his father,” Barbara reminded the speaker so that every
one in the room could hear her. “The Washington authorities have
promised to release Nicky’s father,” she managed to say. “They have
found him innocent,” she declared indignantly. “He never should have
been—have been taken from his family,” she insisted, as she always had
done when jail or prison might have been the word to choose.

“Hump!” grunted Nicky, “nobody never would have knowed that if it
hadn’t a-been for you!”

“Nicky!” Barbara tried to hush him.

“He’s right,” sang out Cara’s voice. “Barbara Hale has been working
all summer to help this Marcusi family and we girls were so stupid we
didn’t even——”

“You did as much as I did,” interrupted Babs, insisting upon paying
the compliment to Cara, in about the way girls insist upon paying each
other’s carfare while the conductor waits.

But the ladies didn’t wait; they clapped.


                                 END




                           This Isn’t All!

    Would you like to know what became of the good friends you
    have made in this book?

    Would you like to read other stories continuing their
    adventures and experiences, or other books quite as
    entertaining by the same author?

    On the _reverse side_ of the wrapper which comes with this
    book, you will find a wonderful list of stories which you
    can buy at the same store where you got this book.

                     Don’t throw away the Wrapper

    Use it as a handy catalog of the books you want some day
    to have. But in case you do mislay it, write to the
    Publishers for a complete catalog.




                        THE LILIAN GARIS BOOKS

            Illustrated. Every volume complete in itself.

    Among her “fan” letters Lilian Garis receives some
    flattering testimonials of her girl readers’ interest in
    her stories. From a class of thirty comes a vote of
    twenty-five naming her as their favorite author. Perhaps
    it is the element of live mystery that Mrs. Garis always
    builds her stories upon, or perhaps it is because the
    girls easily can translate her own sincere interest in
    themselves from the stories. At any rate her books prosper
    through the changing conditions of these times, giving
    pleasure, satisfaction, and, incidentally, that tactful
    word of inspiration, so important in literature for young
    girls. Mrs. Garis prefers to call her books “juvenile
    novels” and in them romance is never lacking.

                           SALLY FOR SHORT

                           SALLY FOUND OUT

                          A GIRL CALLED TED

                   TED AND TONY, TWO GIRLS OF TODAY

                         CLEO’S MISTY RAINBOW

                           CLEO’S CONQUEST

                             BARBARA HALE

                    BARBARA HALE’S MYSTERY FRIEND
                 (Formerly Barbara Hale and Cozette)

                            NANCY BRANDON

                       NANCY BRANDON’S MYSTERY

                            CONNIE LORING
                  (Formerly Connie Loring’s Dilemma)

                     CONNIE LORING’S GYPSY FRIEND
                 (Formerly Connie Loring’s Ambition)

                           JOAN: JUST GIRL

                      JOAN’S GARDEN OF ADVENTURE

                      GLORIA: A GIRL AND HER DAD

                      GLORIA AT BOARDING SCHOOL

                 GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers NEW YORK