It was all very mysterious to her but she accepted Eleanor unquestioningly since her wonderful brother did.
Luckily the train was drawing into the station at the moment of their arrival and so the four boys swung on up to the platform and almost before the girls realized, they found themselves alone. Virginia at once called up Mrs. Dorsey, who burst into tears when she learned that her charges were safe and for several seconds she could not make herself understood.
After that, in an unaccountably short time, or so it seemed, Micky appeared with the bus. The little fellow was overjoyed to see his beloved Babs once again. When the school was reached, the door was thrown open and the stout and motherly Mrs. Dorsey ran down the steps, her apron flying, her arms outstretched as though she would gather them all into her warm embrace. “You darlings!” she sobbed, as she held close those who were nearest. “This is the happiest moment, I guess, in the long life of me. I was so dreading that I’d have to tell poor Mrs. Martin that I hadn’t been worthy of the trust she’d put in me.” Then, wiping her eyes with her apron, she added: “But do come in, you poor tired-out creatures. I’ve been running around ever since you telephoned, trying to get you up a good hot meal, and, as soon as you’re washed and ready, it will be the same. Not washed, of course,” the kind woman smiled through the tears that still came, “but anyhow ’twill be ready.”
Peggy, she had taken as a matter of course, not stopping to ask or wonder how Eleanor Burgess had procured a little cousin on her strange voyage.
The girls started away and had reached an upper landing when a flustered and visibly excited housekeeper reappeared at the foot of the stairs. “Oh, Eleanor Burgess,” she exclaimed. The girls all turned to listen. “There’s been a phone call coming for you every little while. It’s long distance and nobody but the operator speaks, so I don’t know who ’tis that’s wanting you. Fearing it was your mother, I didn’t say anything about your being lost. I just said call later, which I’m expecting they will.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Dorsey.” Then Eleanor turned glowing eyes toward her friends. “Mother has come back even sooner than she had expected, I do believe, and probably she is sending for me to come to her in Boston. Oh, how glad I am that she knows nothing of our recent adventure.”
“You’ll be glad to see her, dear, won’t you?” Virginia kissed the flushed cheek of her friend. Then they went to their rooms to change their dresses. Eleanor hardly knew what to put on little Peggy.
The queer costume of the child had escaped Mrs. Dorsey’s notice since Betsy Clossen, who was the smallest among them, had put her sweater coat over the little one’s shoulders and it reached nearly to her knees.
“I have a dress in my trunk that I long ago outgrew,” Betsy said, “but I liked it so much I have kept it. I believe it can be taken in with safety so that at least it won’t slip off.”
A merry time the roommates had washing and dressing the little maid. They did not attempt to take the tangles out of the child’s hair. “It will have to be cut off, but we can’t do that now,” Eleanor said, and, even as she spoke, a familiar gong sounded through the corridors.