"Her mother scrubbed her," laughed Henrietta, "and brushed a lot of sand out of her hair—didn't you hear terrible wails? But Mabel was glad to see her mother, just the same."
The threatening clouds that had so alarmed the two launch-men passed harmlessly over Pete's Patch; and the next day proved so fine that Billy was moved to a hammock under the trees, where the overlapping leaves of huge maples formed a most attractive roof. The change agreed with him; fortified with fresh eggs and fresh air he grew stronger with astonishing rapidity; a rapidity that proved alarming to Mrs. Crane; for, like Bettie, this new invalid was no sooner on his feet than he made tracks for the alluring lake.
"If I had a bathing suit," said Billy, when Mrs. Crane had, for the fourth time, forbidden him to wade in the lake, "I'd go in swimming—then you couldn't pull me out so easily."
"But, Billy——"
"All right, I'll be good," promised Billy, "but that's a mighty fine bunch of water—say, couldn't you make some swimming tights for a chap?"
"When you're strong enough to swim," agreed Mrs. Crane.
Physically, young Billy improved by leaps and bounds; but the stronger he grew, the more he worried over his strange lapses of memory.
"Sometimes I dream things," complained Billy, one day. "And when I wake up I wonder how much of it is true. Last night I thought I was falling down, down out of an airship and I called 'Mother, mother! I can't find my umbrella.'"
"Have you a mother?" asked Jean, quickly.
"I don't know. But I think so—I dream of some person who says: 'Now don't do that, Lad—Lad——'"