“Do not be uneasy. I have gone in search of Mr. Hook.Phoebe.”
“Do not be uneasy. I have gone in search of Mr. Hook.
Phoebe.”
Miss Campbell groaned as she read the message aloud.
“Really, Billie,” she exclaimed reproachfully, “you and your father between you induced me to come to this place for peace and rest——”
Billie’s eyes filled with tears.
“Never mind, child,” added the distracted lady. “It’s not your fault.”
“It all came about,” remarked Mary, who was fond of tracing things to their beginnings, “because Billie bought a pail of blackberries from Phoebe one morning and Mrs. Lupo was angry.”
This might be considered an interesting and perfectly true statement, but nobody heard it, because they were busy organizing a search party. A few moments later Billie and Ben went down to the village in the motor car for guides, and this time guides were forthcoming.
CHAPTER XIX.THE MILLS OF GOD.
It was not often that Billie lost a night’s rest from anxiety, but that night her eyes refused to close and she lay staring into the darkness, straining her ears for sounds in the forest. Even Richard’s sister, Maggie, was not so abjectly miserable as Billie. She tried to explain to herself that it was all because she had been the one to shoot the young man in the arm.
“I’d much rather have shot that horrid Lupo,” she sobbed under her breath. “Suppose I’ve killed Richard? The wound may be much worse than we thought it was.” She wiped her eyes on the sheet and lay very still listening. Away off on the mountain somewhere a dog began to howl. The weird sound made her shiver and hide her face in the pillow.
“Oh, God protect him,” she whispered, and then blushed furiously. “I suppose I have a perfect right to pray for a friend?” she thought in reply to some unspoken thought.
Besides the anxiety she felt, all sorts of new and unusual sensations were disturbing her peace of mind that wakeful night. She experienced a kind of irritation against Phoebe, which she could not explain to herself.
“He’ll think she’s lots braver than I am,” she thought, naming no names, “because I wouldn’t dare go out in the woods alone at night to hunt for him. She is braver and better than I am. She is wonderful and—and so beautiful. I—I wish my hair wasn’t so straight,” she added to the pillow into which she had poured these girlish secrets.
At last when the first gray streaks of dawn appeared, Billie rose and, quietly dressing, crept downstairs.
“How silly I have been,” she was admonishingherself, irritably, when she saw Phoebe run around the side of the house and stand looking up at the sleeping porch.
Billie dashed across the clearing.
“Phoebe, have you found him? Is he all right?” she demanded, grasping the girl’s shoulders and shaking her in her impatience.
“Yes. I found him and took him to my home,” answered Phoebe proudly. “He was lost in the marsh just as you were. His arm was bleeding and he was very weak.”
“He is very ill?”
“No, no. It was from losing so much blood, they said.”
“They?”
“Old Granny and Dr. Hume. My father is there, too.” Phoebe clasped her hands. “Oh, God is good to me,” she cried. “That I should find my father and Mr. Hook on the same day.”
Billie felt strangely irritated, and then reproachful of herself.
“And your father, Phoebe,” she asked kindly. “What happened to him?”
“On the day he came to the camp, he said, the language of the German girl stirred up something in his mind. After he went away he must have been very confused and he only remembers walking for a long time and then falling. You would not guess who found and has cared for him all this time? Old Granny and Mrs. Lupo. They brought him to Granny’s cabin, where Mrs. Lupo has been hiding. Then the doctor came, and they got a wagon and moved him down the mountain to our home. That was yesterday.”
“I am so glad,” said Billie, endeavoring to be sympathetic, but feeling really much more relieved over the safety of Richard Hook.
“The doctor has sent you some written messages,” went on Phoebe, giving Billie a little note book. “They are inside.”
“My dear Miss Billie,” the note read, “not long ago you asked me to restore the sleepingmemory of our friend and I told you it was sometimes best to let sleeping memories lie. Since that time I have become deeply interested in the personality of Phoebe’s father. He is a gentleman, undoubtedly, in birth and breeding. He is perfectly aware that he has lost his memory and has discussed the mystery of his identity with me so intelligently that I may say I feel it my duty to do what I can. Even his illusion regarding the physician is more in the nature of a deep and lasting impression evidently made just before he took the plunge into forgetfulness. I have mentioned that to him, too. He has never talked to people before on these subjects because there has never been anyone to talk to, but I have suggested the operation and he is keen to have it done. I must confess I am filled with curiosity about him. Who knows what distinguished niche he may have occupied once somewhere? I may be restoring—well, never mind. There is no use making guesses now. In spite of his broken leg,he is in good physical condition and I am going to have the thing over with. I am therefore asking you to send the telegrams you will find further over, to two young surgeons I know who will be interested enough in the case to put up with the inconvenience of the place. I would not risk exciting this mysterious person by moving him to a hospital. Mrs. Lupo appears anxious to make amends and will remain to cook and help generally. I think you had better bring over the ‘Comet’ to take back your friend, Mr. R. Hook, who seems strangely eager to return, although I have done my best to entertain him. I wonder if it could be a princess disguised as a beggar girl or a princess undisguised, who has so stirred young Richard’s soul. I need not say which princess has stirred mine.
“Faithfully, William Hume.”
Now, what did the doctor mean by all this nonsense, Billie asked herself. It was true thatPhoebe, when she had gone in search of Richard had put on her old faded gingham, and certainly Richard owed a great deal to the beggar maid in disguise, but she—Billie—did wish the doctor wouldn’t tease.
Billie blessed the “Comet” that morning from the bottom of her heart. It was a busy time and the swift, faithful machine enabled them to accomplish in a few hours what with a horse and wagon might have taken them at least a day to do. After breakfast he carried them down to the village, where Dr. Hume’s telegrams were sent, and where something happened that set Billie wondering about the identity of Phoebe and her father.
While Ben sent the telegrams and Maggie Hook and Mary looked over the souvenir post cards in the general store, Billie sat on the steps outside reading a letter from her father. Only Phoebe, once more attired in the white blouse and duck skirt, remained in the car. A big touringcar containing two men and a chauffeur drew up alongside the “Comet,” and while one of the men went into the store, the other paced up and down outside. He was a man about Mr. Campbell’s age, tall and foreign looking with a soldierly bearing. Billie glanced at him only once and went on reading her letter. Presently she noticed that he was standing in front of her, his hat in his hand.
“Will you pardon me if I interrupt you?” he asked in good English with an accent. “May I take the liberty of asking you a question?”
“Oh, certainly,” answered Billie politely.
“May I inquire the name of the young lady in the motor car, if it is not too great an impertinence? I ask not from curiosity, but because I perceive a strong likeness.”
“Her name is ‘Phoebe,’” Billie answered.
“And her surname?”
Billie hesitated. After all it was absurd to assert that Phoebe’s last name was “French.”
“You do not know her last name?”
“Well,—you see—she hasn’t any,” Billie stammered. “She—her father has forgotten who he was.”
“So?” ejaculated the stranger. “And they live?”
“They live on Indian Head Mountain in a little cabin.”
“Will you pardon me if again I seem inquisitive? The young lady—you say she lives in what you call acabeenand yet she seems not to be poor—that is, in appearance, I mean.”
Billie flushed again. It did seem very much like gossiping to answer all these questions, but this stranger was commanding,—rather elegant in his manner.
“The young lady has friends, perhaps? People who have helped her?”
“Yes, that is it,” said Billie.
“Another question and I shall not trouble you further. Where is this—er—cabeen?”
“It is on a ledge over ‘Table Top’ on ‘Indian Head Mountain,’” answered Billie promptly, having good reason to remember that location. “Take the road to the right at the end of this street and it takes you straight there. It’s called ‘Indian Head Road.’”
The stranger took a notebook and pencil from his pocket and wrote down the names. When he closed the book, Billie saw that it was of Russian leather with a coat of arms in dull gilt embossed on the back. The pencil fitted into a flat gold case on which also was the coat of arms. She glanced quickly at Phoebe and her heart gave a leap. It was not difficult to connect coats of arms and grand things with Phoebe. Billie could easily picture her in the midst of fine surroundings.
“She is a princess,” she thought wistfully. “And beautiful and good.”
The stranger also was watching Phoebe. His face worked with emotion and he said something in German in a low voice.
“And her father?” he asked suddenly. “Where is he?”
“At the cabin,” answered Billie.
“You are indeed very kind,” and the stranger, making a low foreign bow, joined his companion in the touring car and in two minutes the great machine was lost in the distance.
Billie’s mind was filled with conjectures on the journey to Phoebe’s home a little later. When they left the car to climb the path to the cabin, she lingered behind the others, thinking deeply, although she had seen Richard from below standing on the very edge of a rocky shelf scanning the road with the doctor’s telescope.
With a shy obstinacy new to her candid nature she pretended not to notice him or to mind that Phoebe with ingenuous joy had run ahead to speak to him first.
“I’ve been waiting for you a long time, Miss Billie,” he exclaimed, having left the others and run down the path to meet her.
“We had to go to the village first,” answered Billie.
“No, no. I mean it has seemed an infernal long time since the ‘Comet’ pulled up down there in the road and you lagged behind.”
“Not ten minutes.”
“I guess it would have seemed long to you if you had been sitting here since eighta. m.watching every vehicle that passed. Not long ago a big black car stopped down there and I was pretty sure it had come to fetch me.”
He gave her one of his ingratiating smiles.
“Who was it?” asked Billie.
“I don’t know. They saw the doctor for a minute and then went on. But I don’t want to talk about them. Why didn’t you hurry?”
“I always heard that sick men were children,” laughed Billie, “and I can see that you are quite ill because you are such a child. We shall take you home now and feed you up on cream and eggs, providing we can get any.”
Billie was glad to see Dr. Hume again. They clasped hands like old comrades. There was a peculiar radiance in his brown eyes as he looked at her.
“You’ve had a great honor paid you, Miss Billie,” he said.
“What in the world?”
“The gods have chosen you to turn their mills a while and you are turning them pretty fast, I can tell you.”
CHAPTER XX.A LONG SLEEP.
The song of the “Comet’s” motor broke the stillness of the afternoon some ten days later as he cheerfully pushed upward on the Indian Head road. Mr. Campbell was at the wheel and beside him sat Billie, glancing up at him from time to time with eyes full of loving devotion. On the back seat was Phoebe, silently contented beside Richard Hook, and the other occupant was Alberdina Schoenbachler, that absurd little hat perched atop her big smiling face.
There had been many days of anxiety and suspense for the people at Sunrise Camp. It was impossible not to feel deeply interested in the strange things that were transpiring in the little cabin on Indian Head. The two young surgeons had arrived; a tent had been pitched alongsidethe cabin, and one morning early the operation was performed. Since that time the patient had lain in a stupor. And now Dr. Hume had sent Mrs. Lupo, tamed and domestic, to take Alberdina’s place at the camp, and Alberdina was to come at once to the cabin. Mrs. Lupo could give no reason; that was all the message stated, except that the patient was doing well.
The doctor went down the path to meet them, when the car stopped under the brow of the hill. He shook hands with Richard Hook, patted Phoebe on the cheek, and said:
“Hang on to your faith, little girl. It’s a wonderful reservoir to draw on.”
Then he grasped hands with Mr. Campbell, whom he had met several times now and liked immensely, nodded to Alberdina, and drawing Billie’s arm through his, marched on ahead.
“Anybody might think my little girl was a consulting physician,” remarked Mr. Campbell, amused at the earnest conversation the young girland the great surgeon had plunged into,—and proud, too, that it should be so.
“Oh, they have lots of secrets from us, Mr. Campbell,” replied Richard Hook. “Miss Billie is confidential adviser to the doctor. I don’t believe he takes a step without consulting her first.”
“Wise man,” answered Billie’s father. “He’ll get some good sound advice, if not entirely professional.”
In the meantime, Billie was saying:
“Oh, doctor, what has happened? Is he conscious? Has he spoken? Does he recognize anyone?”
“How could he, child, when there is no one for him to recognize? Recollect that in coming to, the man has taken up the thread of his life of eighteen or twenty years ago. I would not trust him to see Phoebe at this point. Only the faces of strangers are safe for him for the time being.”
“And the stranger never came back who inquired about him that day?”
“No. I told him two weeks would be safer. There is no doubt the man was a personage of some sort. His companion said, ‘Yes, Excellency,’ as they went down the path. I suppose he’s got some kind of a title.”
“Did he seem excited?” asked Billie.
“I could hardly say excited. He appeared a good deal moved by the story of Phoebe and her father. He asked me if any money was needed.”
“Of course you said ‘no’?” observed Billie.
“I did. It’s my turn now. His turn may come later. I explained to him that any excitement or sudden recognition immediately after the operation might prove fatal or disastrous, and he took himself off. But I consider that Phoebe’s father is practically identified.”
“Is he conscious?” asked Billie with subdued excitement.
“Not only conscious, but, my dear child, what do you think? Speaking German; not English.”
Billie gasped.
“That’s why you wanted Alberdina.”
“Yes, I needed someone who could speak with him, and a servant would be excellent; better, really, than an educated German. Just now the man’s mind is in terrible confusion. He is back in another country somewhere, but he is holding his own, and if he can get over the shock which must come when he links his past with his present, I believe we need have no fear for his reason; but it will be a pretty ticklish moment.”
The doctor looked down into Billie’s eager, earnest face, and his eyes were filled with admiration.
“Oh, doctor,” she exclaimed, “you are so wonderful. Next to Papa, the most wonderful man I have ever met. Richard and I——”
“What!” interrupted the doctor, smiling, “do you mean to say that that young whipper snapper, with his Gypsy notions and his clever tongue, has already photographed himself on your mind? I should never have bathed and bound his wounds if I had guessed it.”
“You know you would,” laughed Billie, blushing a little. “But he’s only a comrade.”
The doctor looked into her eyes again.
“That’s what they all should be, Miss Billie,” he said. “Comrades. And if I were only fifteen years younger, I should be looking for just such a comrade as you.”
“But I am your comrade,” protested the young girl. “Just as much as Richard’s. I’m proud to be. It’s the greatest honor that’s ever been paid to me.”
“Oh, to be young again,” sighed the doctor with a humorous lift to his eyebrows. “Oh, to be young, like young Richard, there. But I must remember that I am a very busy middle-aged person with an extremely interesting patient to pull through. I trust he’ll thank me for the job.”
“Don’t you honestly believe he is some distinguished person?”
“I couldn’t say, little comrade, but I could guess that he’s no ordinary one.”
They had reached the cabin now. The others had come up, and they all stood outside talking in low voices. After a brief word with Alberdina, Dr. Hume conducted her into the little room where the Motor Maids and their friends had once found refuge. From the doorway, Billie could see the silver candlesticks on the mantel shelf. Mrs. Lupo had kept them brightly polished and they lent a strange charm and refinement to the bare apartment. Phoebe crept in and knelt outside her father’s door.
“Now, Alberdina,” said the doctor as a last caution, “you understand that you are not to speak unless the gentleman inside asks you a question in German. Answer him in three words if you can. Then come out quietly. If he calls, you may go back.”
Alberdina laid aside her comedy hat and followed the doctor into the sick room. The others gathered noiselessly outside the window and listened. There was a long silence. Then the manon the bed spoke in a low, weak voice. It was only a mumble of sounds to Billie and Richard, but Mr. Campbell understood German and listened intently.
Alberdina replied not in three words but in a long voluble speech.
They held their breath.
“Come out,” called the doctor softly.
The sick man had begun to speak again. He seemed to be giving orders.
At the door Phoebe was weeping softly. Her father, restored to himself, was a stranger who spoke in a foreign tongue. Billie was fairly shaking with excitement.
“Do you suppose he’s forgotten English?” she whispered to Richard, who made the most absurd reply that had nothing whatever to do with Phoebe’s father and lost memories.
“I think the doctor had better take you in hand,” said Billie.
“I have an incurable disease,” answered the young man, not in the least ashamed.
Mr. Campbell had joined the doctor and Alberdina at the other end of the house where their voices could not be heard in the sick room. The young surgeons were also in the group. When Billie and Richard came up, the German girl was saying:
“I cannot from the German English mag. He is a German already yet?”
“Of course,” answered the doctor impatiently, “but what did he ask you?”
Alberdina broke into German.
“No, no. In English.”
“He very sig yet ees——”
The doctor gave poor Alberdina a withering glance.
“I think I can tell you most of the conversation, Doctor,” put in Mr. Campbell. “The patient asked Alberdina if she were one of the maids at the palace. She answered at great length that she was laundress at Sunrise Camp. ‘This was not a palace,’ she explained, ‘but a hut.’
“‘I have been in an accident?’” the sick man asked, as Mr. Campbell translated it.
“When Alberdina acquiesced, he told her to call Franz or Karl.
“Seeing her shake her head, he said:
“‘The Baron von Metz is here?’
“‘No,’ answered Alberdina.
“‘None of the household?’”
Then he gave her orders to telegraph the Baron von Metz at an address in Dresden and sign it A. J. Mr. Campbell had failed to catch the telegram, although he distinctly heard the second telegram to a “Miss Phoebe Jones,” at an address in England. It said she was not to worry. He had been detained by illness. Twice he made the blundering maid repeat the telegram, and finally exhausted with the mental effort, dropped into unconsciousness.
Was it not strange and terrible to take up the thread of one’s life where it had been so ruthlessly snapped off some two decades ago?
Richard and Billie, seated on a rock out of hearing distance of the cabin, discussed the anomaly together.
“It’s like Rip Van Winkle,” Billie observed, “only worse because there have been so many inventions.”
“Yes, there are motor cars, for instance. They were only on trial then; and flying machines.”
“And hobble skirts,” added Billie with an inward laugh, remembering Nancy’s.
“It’s very interesting,” said Richard, “a good deal like missing the middle act of a drama.”
“Don’t you imagine that Phoebe’s father belonged to a noble family? Perhaps he was a younger son, and fell in love with a pretty English girl named Phoebe Jones. They eloped to America and hid themselves in the mountains, and the old Archduke or Prince or Baron who was the father perhaps gave it out that his son was insane. They always do that, you know.”
“Very romantic,” said Richard, “but why has he been speaking only English all these years?”
“Don’t ask me anything so scientific, please.”
“It would go hard with me,” pursued Richard, “if I got a blow on the head over my English-language bump, because I wouldn’t have any other to take its place.”
Having arranged the history of the sick man to their own satisfaction, and as a matter of fact, to the doctor’s and Mr. Campbell’s also, they returned to Sunrise Camp, leaving Alberdina and Phoebe behind them.
Poor Phoebe had watched Billie and Richard together from the doorstep of the cabin. Then she had folded her hands with a gesture of resignation and closed her eyes. Something had hurt her. She still felt the pain and not all her faith nor prayers could ease it.
That night the campers gathered around the fire and discussed the mystery of the “Prince in Exile,” as they had named Phoebe’s father. They told stories of similar cases, of men with double identities who had been lost for years, of menwho had made new lives for themselves and even earned fortunes.
“I knew he was a prince the first time I saw him,” Mary exclaimed.
“And now Phoebe will be a princess and perhaps very rich,” observed Elinor.
“Think of stepping from a cabin to a palace,” went on Amy Swinnerton. “From being a barefooted girl selling blackberries on the mountain to being a noble lady with a retinue of servants.”
And so they all talked and discussed and enjoyed themselves immensely until a motor horn interrupted them. A car had evidently stopped in front and someone now hurried over to the group around the fire.
“Well, children,” called Dr. Hume, “I daresay you’ll be interested in the news I am bringing you.”
“Wasn’t I right?” cried Billie.
“He was a prince?”
“Or a duke, perhaps?”
“Even a baron is pretty good.”
There was a long pause.
“You are wonderful guessers,” said the doctor. “He lived in a palace.”
“I knew it,” cried Mary.
“Would it disappoint you very much if I were to tell you that the gentleman without a memory who lived in a palace was not a prince, nor a duke, nor a baron, but at one time a clergyman?”
“Oh!” they exclaimed in varying tones of surprise and disappointment.
“Then how the palace?” asked Maggie Hook.
“The Rev. Archibald Jones, a highly educated English gentleman of no means to speak of, was tutor in a noble family in Germany.”
“But his wife? She was a princess?” cried Mary, almost weeping.
“Every woman is a princess, my dear young lady,” replied the gallant doctor.
“But a real one, Doctor? One who lived in a palace?”
“She lived in the palace, yes. She was attached to the household as English governess. The tutor and the governess met, as well they might even in a grand castle, and being in the same boat as regards teaching and birth, they fell in love. The lady was very beautiful, I understand.”
“And then?” demanded the chorus.
“Then they came to America where the field was larger even than in a palace with thenoblesse. The young wife fell sick and the young husband, having saved a bit of money, brought her up into the mountains. The night Phoebe was born he tried to take a short cut down the mountainside to get a doctor who was stopping at a hotel now in ruins——”
Percy bowed his head.
“I recognize the spot,” he said.
“And the young tutor husband not of the nobility fell and hit his head against a rock. He was brought back insensible by an old Indian grandfatherof Mrs. Lupo. The beautiful young wife only lived a few days, and when the father was better and the baby stronger the Indian took them and their belongings across the valley to Indian Head, where they have lived ever since.”
“Poor things,” exclaimed Miss Campbell. “What a pitiful, sad story!”
“And the wife’s name was Phoebe Jones?” asked Billie.
“Wrong again,” replied the doctor. “Would you have a Jones marry a Jones?”
“Then who, pray, was Miss Phoebe Jones?”
“Aunt of the Rev. Archibald. For some reason he remembered the name and I suppose gave it to the child.”
“Then who was the German gentleman who recognized Phoebe?”
“Now you are getting down to real romance,” replied the doctor.
“He was the young noble for whom the Rev. Archibald acted as tutor.” Here the doctor spokeslowly and impressively. “He loved the English governess and when she married the poor tutor, his noble heart was broken and never has been mended.”
“And he never married another?” piped up Mary’s small voice.
“Oh yes, my dear. The nobility always marries. Singleness is against the rules. He married and has a family of six.”
“And is that the end of the story?” asked Billie.
“No, there is a sequel. It seems that when the Rev. and Mrs. Archibald Jones disappeared from the stage of life without explanation only one person, after a decade or more, still clung to the belief that they were not dead. None other than Miss Phoebe Jones herself, spinster, living in Surrey, England. She recently died leaving her property to her nephew, his wife or possible heirs. It seems that the gentlemen who just now dropped me at your door——”
“The disappointed lover?”
“Yes. The broken-hearted noble with a wife and six children, knew about this will because the lawyers in trying to trace Mr. Jones and his wife had got into communication with him.”
“And so they won’t be poor,” said Nancy. “I’m glad of that. Phoebe looked beautiful in good clothes.”
Everybody laughed, and then the doctor remarked:
“And so the story has a plain ending, after all. Phoebe is not a princess and you are all disappointed.”
“No, no, no,” they protested, but the doctor knew better.
CHAPTER XXI.COMRADES OF THE ROAD.
Already the scarlet sumac lit the road with its flaming torch, and here and there on the mountainside a flash of scarlet like a redbird’s wing appeared among the masses of foliage. Autumn was at hand, the autumn of the Adirondacks, when the evening air is nipped with the hint of frosts to come and the sky is a deeper blue than ever it is at mid-summer.
Summer comrades of the road may not linger in the hills at this enchanting season. There is work to be done in the valleys where the busy people live. In a few days now the shutters of log cabin camps will be closed and traveling vans will be sent to winter quarters.
The boys and girls who have lingered around the campfire, singing songs and telling storiesunder the great harvest moon, all comrades of the road, must turn their thoughts to soberer things than roasting apples and school day reminiscences. The grown people, too, stretched out in their steamer chairs, have been idling away the hours. Vaguely, as in a mist, a great surgeon recalls that there is a hospital somewhere he has been neglecting for weeks. An engineer is thinking of his tunnel only just started through the heart of a mountain. A little old spinster, fair and fresh as a rose, recalls with a start that for many weeks she has been sleeping under the stars and eating strange food on a bare deal table; and down in the valley her beautiful old home, filled with memories of her girlhood, is waiting to shelter her.
Near the spinster sits a tall man with a delicate, nervous face. He sits with folded arms, his eyes fixed on the back wall of mountains across the valley. He is thinking not of the future of the little home in Surrey that awaitshim, but of the twenty black years behind him, as blank and empty as the years of a prisoner spent in solitary confinement. Sometimes, with a curious, startled gaze, he turns his eyes toward his daughter, seated in the circle with the young people.
While we have been taking this leisurely view of our friends, Alberdina has approached, smiling broadly over a great tray of cakes and ginger ale. Mrs. Lupo is hovering in the background.
“It was that skirt of the young lady’s that brought me really back to my senses,” Mrs. Lupo had confessed to Miss Campbell. “I thought the young lady had sunk in the mire. The misery that come to me then made me see things different; that and the prayer you taught me. Lupo, he’s workin’ now in the valley and when the camp is broke up, I guess we’ll forgive and forgit.”
Miss Campbell, glancing at Mrs. Lupo now in the background, wondered if that awful memory of the carving knife was not a dream.
“Papa,” Billie called from her place near the campfire, “you mustn’t forget to send pounds and pounds of really good coffee to old Granny, the herb gatherer, enough to last her all winter.”
“I’ll make a note of it, daughter. Are there any other old parties you wish to pension off with coffee or tea this winter?”
“No, papa. But I’d like to keep old Granny in coffee for the rest of her life because she loves it so.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” called Percy, rising and flourishing an apple on the end of a long stick, “I made a discovery this morning through a letter from a friend, and I’ve been saving it until this moment to spring it on the Motor Maids and company.”
“About whom is this discovery?” asked Richard uneasily, raising his eyebrows and blinking his humorous eyes.
“It’s about two impostors who travel around in a little wooden house on wheels and live like Gypsies——”
“Oh, dear,” cried Maggie, “now what have you been finding out about us, pray?”
“I know,” said Richard. “You’ve found that we are really Gypsies and only pretending to be amateurs.”
“Nothing of the sort. I’ve discovered that you have been traveling under a disguise——”
“My name is certainly ‘Hook,’” put in Richard.
“And mine is Maggie,” piped his sister.
“Maybe so,” went on Percy. “That’s not the disguise. You’ve been wearing the cloak of poverty, when you are really as rich as cream, the pair of you, with an old grandfather in England who has a title and castles and much pleasing property; and every now and then the old grandpapa sends for you and you have to give up Gypsying and fly.”
“Andhe’syour boss who’s always interfering with your vacations?” interrupted Billie.
“And you justpretendto be poor for the noveltyof the experience?” asked Nancy. “I wish I could pretend to be rich in the same way.”
“But we are Gypsies at heart,” put in Maggie, “and I do love to scrub and cook. Grandpapa’s is so dull.”
“And where does Grandpapa think you are now? Not in a traveling van, I’ll wager,” said Miss Campbell.
Maggie laughed.
“We are supposed to be visiting Aunt Lucretia. She’s our American aunt, Papa’s sister, who brought us up, before Grandpapa decided to recognize us. You see Mamma would marry Papa, who was poor then, and came from Maine. He looked just like Richard and I don’t blame her. Grandpapa lets us come every summer to visit Aunt Lucretia now.”
“And where does Aunt Lucretia think you are?”
“Why, visiting Amy Swinnerton.”
Who could keep from laughing over thisbrother and sister who loved the life on the road and the campfire?
“Thank fortune, I’m not in line for the title,” Richard whispered to Billie under cover of the conversation of the others, “and Grandpapa or no Grandpapa, I shall buy that farm,—do you guess where?”
“I can’t imagine,” answered Billie.
“In West Haven. I’ve never seen it, but that is the place you like best, isn’t it?”
“I think I like the traveling van best,” answered Billie irrelevantly,—“that is, next to the ‘Comet,’” she added with a sudden feeling of loyalty toward the faithful motor car.
“The traveling van would be a part of it and the ‘Comet,’ too, for that matter.”
Then he calmly slipped his hand over hers under the folds of her scarlet cape.
“Shall we be comrades of the road?” he whispered.
“Some day, perhaps,” Billie answered, nottaking her hand away, but glancing shyly at her father, who was watching her face in the fire light.
Then she smiled at Richard. After all, she was past eighteen and Richard,—well, Richard was the most delightful person she had ever met in all her life.
Let us take leave of our young people before they go back to the valleys where work is waiting for them. Brown and strong and happy, they sit in a circle talking and laughing, as boys and girls will, under the light of the harvest moon.
While they are still comrades of the road, we will bid them good-night.
Good-night, little Mary, calm and sweet, watching the stars twinkling through the tree tops. Good-night to you, Nancy, dimpling and smiling, while Percy whispers in your ear; and Elinor, too, talking quietly and happily to Ben. And now a last good-night to Billie, best of comrades, kindest and truest of friends.
THE END
THE “HOW-TO-DO-IT” BOOKS
By J. S. ZERBE
Carpentry for Boys
A book which treats, in a most practical and fascinating manner all subjects pertaining to the “King of Trades”; showing the care and use of tools; drawing; designing, and the laying out of work; the principles involved in the building of various kinds of structures, and the rudiments of architecture. It contains over two hundred and fifty illustrations made especially for this work, and includes also a complete glossary of the technical terms used in the art. The most comprehensive volume on this subject ever published for boys.
Electricity for Boys
The author has adopted the unique plan of setting forth the fundamental principles in each phase of the science, and practically applying the work in the successive stages. It shows how the knowledge has been developed, and the reasons for the various phenomena, without using technical words so as to bring it within the compass of every boy. It has a complete glossary of terms, and is illustrated with two hundred original drawings.
Practical Mechanics for Boys
This book takes the beginner through a comprehensive series of practical shop work, in which the uses of tools, and the structure and handling of shop machinery are set forth; how they are utilized to perform the work, and the manner in which all dimensional work is carried out. Every subject is illustrated, and model building explained. It contains a glossary which comprises a new system of cross references, a feature that will prove a welcome departure in explaining subjects. Fully illustrated.
For sale by all Booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of $1.00.
M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY711 S. DEARBORN STREET :: CHICAGO
THE VICTORY BOY SCOUTS
BYCAPTAIN ALAN DOUGLASSCOUTMASTER
Stories from the pen of a writer who possesses a thorough knowledge of his subject. In addition to the stories there is an addenda in which useful boy scout nature lore is given, all illustrated. There are the following twelve titles in the series:
12mo. Lintex. Postpaid, Price each 50c
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THE BOYS’ ELITE SERIES
12mo, cloth. Price 75c each.
Contains an attractive assortment of books for boys by standard and favorite authors. Printed from large, clear type on a superior quality of paper, bound in a superior quality of binders’ cloth, ornamented with illustrated original designs on covers stamped in colors from unique and appropriate dies. Each book wrapped in attractive jacket.
THE GIRLS’ ELITE SERIES
12mo, cloth. Price 75c each.
Contains an assortment of attractive and desirable books for girls by standard and favorite authors. The books are printed on a good quality of paper in large clear type. Each title is complete and unabridged. Bound in clothene, ornamented on the sides and back with attractive illustrative designs and the title stamped on front and back.
12mo. Lintex. Postpaid, Price each 50c
M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY711 S. DEARBORN STREET :: CHICAGO