They went to their room and took off their sweaters and helmets. When they had washed their faces and combed their hair, they were so presentable that no one even noticed them as they entered the dining room. After all, it was a common sight to see girls in knickers.
The dinner was delicious, and they ate it with great enjoyment, but neither girl could get the accident out of her mind, or the pathetic child—for she seemed like only a child to them, with her strange superstition. So they decided, when they finished their meal, to call two of the Milwaukee newspapers, and to give them the story, with their own names as references.
“And may we print yours and Miss Crowley’s pictures, Miss Carlton?” asked the delighted reporter. “We have them on file, you know.”
Linda groaned.
“How is that going to help identify this girl?” she demanded. “It’s her picture you ought to print.”
“We would, if we had it. We’ll get it later. But your pictures will call attention to the article.... However, we don’t wait for permission in a case like this, Miss Carlton. You’ll just have to grin and bear it!”
Chapter II
The Lost Girl
When the young girl whom Linda and Dot had rescued opened her eyes in the hospital the following day, it was a strange world which she looked upon. It was as if she had been abruptly transported to another planet, where her name and her past life were forgotten. She remembered her hurt head, and the girls who had come down in the airplane, but her mind was still an utter blank about the days and years that had gone before.
Her forehead throbbed with pain as she tried vainly to think. It was horrible, terrifying, to be stranded in an unfamiliar place like this, without any money in her pockets, without any home to go to after she was well. She pressed her fingers over her eyelids in an effort to bring back something. But one memory only remained—the dreadful vision of a ghost!
Kind as her nurse tried to be, she seemed like only a human machine to this unhappy child, who waited feverishly for the return of Linda Carlton and Dorothy Crowley—her only friends in the whole world.