"We'll just have to wait until Dave gets back, I suppose. But you can dose the boy with Bettie's fever medicine—not the tonic—and perhaps we can pull him through."
"Anyway, we'll try," assured Mrs. Crane.
CHAPTER XIV
A Missing Messenger
IT was Thursday when Mabel discovered the boy. Friday morning Dave was still missing and the lad was still unconscious.
"He must have been a pretty tough little chap to start with," declared Mrs. Crane, when all the members of her always-hungry family had been bountifully served with steaming breakfast food, "or he never would have lasted as long as this with such a fever. I wish Dave was here. He ought to have a doctor; and, if the boy's people live in Lakeville, they'll surely want to know that he's alive."
"We've been talking about that," said Jean, "and we don't think he is a Lakeville boy."
"You see," explained Marjory, "he must be about twelve or thirteen years old—somewhere between Mabel's age and Henrietta's. If he'd been in school one or another of us would have seen him—we're scattered all over, you know."
"And I," said Henrietta, "am scattered about in all the grades, because I'm so smart and so stupid in spots."