THREE SMALL SURVIVORS
It did not take Uncle Tom very long, experienced as he was, to bring the three children back to consciousness. As it was, they had been more affected by the cold and the fright than anything else, for the raft, crude as it was, had kept them above the surface of the waves and saved their lives.
As the girls bent over them eagerly, helping Uncle Tom as well as they could, the faint color came back to the pinched little faces, and slowly the children opened their eyes.
“Oh, they are alive, bless ’em,” cried Billie, jumping to her feet. But the quick action seemed to terrify the children, and they cried out in alarm. In a minute Billie was back on her knees beside them, looking at them wonderingly.
“Why, what’s the matter?” she asked, putting out her hand to the little boy, who shrank away from her and raised an arm before his eyes. “Why, honey, did you really think Billie would hurt a nice little boy like you?”
But all three children had begun to cry, and Billie looked helplessly at her chums.
Uncle Tom had spread a large rug on the floor and had laid the children on it while he worked over them. Up to this time he had been on his knees beside the girls, but now he got to his feet and looked down at them soberly.
“Somebody’s been mistreating ’em,” he said, his eyes on the three cowering, pathetic little figures. “Poor little mites—poor little mites! Found ’em on a sort of raft, you say? Washed up by the waves?”
The girls nodded, and Billie, putting a tender arm around the little fellow, succeeded in drawing him up close to her while Laura and Vi tried to do the same with the little girls. Connie was watching her Uncle Tom.
“H’m,” said the latter, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Folks on the ship probably—drowned out there. Poor little waifs. Kind of up to us to take care of ’em, I reckon.”
“Of course it is,” cried Connie, jumping to her feet. “Uncle Tom, where did Mother and Daddy go?”
“On, toward the house,” said Uncle Tom, nodding his head in the direction of the bungalow. “When they couldn’t find you they got kind o’ worried and thought you must have made tracks for home.”
“Here they come now,” cried Laura, for through the windows she had caught sight of Mr. and Mrs. Danvers hurrying along the walk toward the lighthouse.
“Oh, I’m glad,” said Billie, hugging the little boy to her and smoothing his damp hair back from his forehead. The child had stopped crying and had snuggled close to Billie, lying very still like a little kitten who has found shelter and comfort in the midst of a wilderness. The soft little confiding warmth of him very suddenly made Billie want to cry. “Your mother will know what to do,” she said to Connie.
“Mother always does,” said Connie confidently, and a minute later opened the door to admit two very much wind-blown, exhausted and very anxious parents.
“Oh, kiddies, what a fright you gave us!” cried Connie’s mother, looking very pale and tired as she leaned against the door post while Mr. Danvers patted her hand gently and tried not to look too much relieved. “Where did you go? Why, girls——” She stopped short in absolute amazement and bewilderment as she caught sight of Laura and Vi and Billie on the floor, each with a child clasped in her arms. “Where did you get them?”
She did not wait for an answer. She flew across the room and, dropping to her knees, gazed at the children who at this new intrusion had started away from the girls and regarded her with wide, doubtful eyes.
“Why, you precious little scared babies, you!” she cried, pushing the girls away and gathering the children to her. “I don’t know where you came from, but what you need is mothering. Where did they come from?” she asked, looking up at Uncle Tom.
“From out there,” said Uncle Tom gravely, waving his hand toward the spot where the ship had gone down. Then he quickly told her and Mr. Danvers what the girls had told him. They did not interrupt. Only, when he had finished, Mrs. Danvers was crying and not trying to hide it.
“Oh, those poor, poor people!” she sobbed. “And these poor little frightened, miserable children all, all there is left. Oh, I’ll never get over the horror of it. Never, never! John,” she added, looking up at her husband with one of those quick changes of mood that the girls had learned to expect in her, “will you and Tom help me get the children home? They mustn’t be left like this in dripping clothes. They’ll catch their death of cold. What they need is a hot bath and something to eat, and then bed. Poor little sweethearts, they are just dropping for sleep.”
So Uncle Tom took one of the little girls, Mr. Danvers another, and Connie’s mother insisted upon carrying the little boy.
“Why, he’s nothing at all to carry,” she said, when her husband protested. “Poor child—he’s only skin and bones.”
So the strange procession started for the bungalow, the girls, tired out with nerve strain and excitement, bringing up the rear. But they did not know they were tired. The mystery of the three strange little waifs washed up to them by the sea had done a good deal to erase even the horror of the wreck.
“And we haven’t the slightest idea in the world who they really are or whom they belong to,” Connie was saying as they turned in at the walk. “It is a mystery, girls, a real mystery this time. And I don’t know how we’ll solve it.”
But they forgot the mystery for the time being in the pleasure of seeing the waifs bathed and wrapped in warm things from the girls’ wardrobes and fed as only Connie’s mother could feed such children.
Gradually the fear died out of the children’s eyes, and once the little boy even reached over timidly and put a soft, warm hand in Billie’s.
“You darling,” she choked, bending over to kiss the little hand. “You’re not afraid of Billie now, are you?”
The little girls, who were twins and as like as two peas, were harder to win over. But by love and tenderness Connie’s mother and the girls managed it at last.
And then eyes grew drowsy, tired little heads nodded, and Connie’s mother, with a look at Mr. Danvers, who had been hovering in the background all the time, picked up one of the little girls and started for the stairs.
“I’m going to tuck them in bed,” she said, speaking softly. “We can put them in our room, John—in the big bed.”
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 ship, 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.”
“Oh, where?” they cried, and then held their breath for her answer.
“In Miss Arbuckle’s album!”