Part 27 (1/2)

A few minutes later the girls stood in Mrs. Danvers' room, looking down at three little flushed faces, three tousled heads that belonged to three very sound-asleep little children.

Connie's mother tiptoed out of the room and motioned to the girls to follow, but they lingered for a minute.

”Aren't they lovely?” asked Connie, with a catch in her voice.

”They're beautiful,” said Laura. ”Especially the little boy.”

”And they ate,” said Vi softly, ”as if they had been half starved. Poor little things--I wonder who they are?”

”Girls,” said Billie gravely, ”I suppose you will laugh at me when I tell you, but ever since I first saw them I have had a strange feeling----”

”Yes,” they said impatiently, as she paused.

”That I have seen them somewhere before,” she finished, looking at them earnestly. ”And now, as they lie there I'm almost sure of it.”

”Seen them before?” repeated Connie, forgetting in her astonishment to lower her voice, so that the little boy stirred restlessly. Billie drew them out into the hall.

”Come into our room,” she said; and they followed her in wondering silence.

”I wish you would say that all over again, Billie,” said Vi eagerly, when they had drawn their chairs up close to Billie. ”You said you had seen them before?”

”No, I said I thought I had seen them before,” said Billie, frowning with the effort to remember. ”It seems foolish, I know----”

”But, Billie, if you feel like that you must have some reason for it,”

said Laura eagerly.

There followed a silence during which Billie frowned some more and the girls watched her eagerly. Then she disappointed them by suddenly jumping up and starting for the door.

”Well,” she said, ”I can't remember now. Maybe I will when I've stopped trying to. Come on, Connie, let's help your mother with the dishes.”

But Billie did not find the answer for several days. Meanwhile they had received word from the boys that they had put into port the afternoon of the great storm and had not been able to go out again until a couple of days later. No news concerning the three waifs had come in.

The boys had received news of the wrecked s.h.i.+p, of course, and were tremendously excited about it.

”You girls have all the luck, anyway,” Chet wrote to Billie. ”Just think--if we had stayed over a few hours we would have seen the wreck too.”

Billie tore the letter up and flung it into the paper basket.

”Luck!” she had murmured, her face suddenly grown white as she gazed out over the water that was brilliantly peaceful once more in the afternoon sunlight. ”He calls _that_ luck!”

The boys had promised to return in a couple of weeks and give the girls a regular ”ride in the motor boat.” If it had not been for the waifs who had so strangely been entrusted to them, the girls would have looked forward more eagerly to the return of the boys.

As it was, they were too busy taking care of the sweet little girls and beautiful little boy and falling in love with them to think much of the boys one way or another except to be deeply thankful that they had escaped disaster in the storm.

And then, when Billie had nearly forgotten that strange impression she had had in the beginning of having seen the children before, suddenly she remembered.

It was one night after the girls had gone to bed. They had been laughing over some of the cunning things the children had been doing, and Laura had been wondering how they would go about finding the relatives of the children--if they had any--when suddenly Billie sat up in bed with a look of astonishment on her face.

”Girls,” she cried, ”I know where I saw those children.”