“Because we have to play games and things. Wait till we get home. I have something on hand now that is very exciting. Could you keep a secret?” Jean’s eyes were dancing and the dimple was in evidence.
“Try me.”
“I haven’t said a word to Molly or Nan or any of the girls, for fear Sybil might get a hint and then have her heart broken.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Right away, Billy, as soon as Sybil said that Jacob Klein took her out of Lake Michigan, I thought of that awful summer when my uncle’s whole family were in a dreadful storm and wreck. They were going to visit us and they never came at all. Don’t you remember about it? Mr. Standish had a piece in his paper about it. Uncle Everett and Aunt Fanny were saved and the two little twin boys, but a girl about my age, mind you, Billy, and a baby, were just swallowed up some way, though they found the little baby. Wouldn’t it be strange if Sybil were Uncle Everett’s child? If she is, her name is Ann Gordon.”
“Say! But things don’t happen that way, Jean.”
“Why don’t they? She has to be somebody, doesn’t she? And maybe I was sent up here to find my cousin. I wrote a letter to Daddy right away, all about it and when it happened, as nearly as Sybil could tell from what Mrs. Klein said. I’ll let you know when I hear. Perhaps,” Jean added impressively, “everybody will know very soon, if it turns out that way!”
But Jean herself was surprised when, before she thought her uncle could possibly have heard from her father, out came the Gordon car with a lady and gentleman whom she had never seen, her uncle and his wife. Sybil was not there, but Jean was, almost afraid that she had done something she should not when she finally realized who had come. “Oh, perhaps I’ve made a big mistake,” she cried, “and then you will be so terribly disappointed!”
“Jean,” said the quiet gentleman who was Uncle Everett, “for four years I have gone to every place where I heard of a child’s having been found and adopted. You would be surprised to know that there have been several children saved from wrecks on the big lake. This is only another chance, though, more likely, for we were not so far from that shore, but there was no report of anything but wreckage found there. Your father telegraphed. Fanny wanted to come with me, to see if she knew the beads you mentioned, and here we are.”
There was a little time of waiting before Sybil, the unknown, came in from the woods with the other girls, all laughing and happy. Never did she look more like Jean than when with eyes alight, she handed Jean a branch which held a little humming-bird’s nest, like a lichen-covered cup. “It was broken off by the storm, Jean,” she said; and then she saw that they had company. “Oh, excuse me,” she said, stepping back.