“Probably not until the last thing before college opens in the fall. It gives Father an extra three months, you see, to stay through another summer.”
“Then you can stay with me as well as not, and if you’d rather have Hope and Caroline, I think that they could be induced to come, too.”
“I shall need no other inducement than yourself, Sidney. Why, I have never been to one of those northern cottages and it is a rare treat you are offering me.”
“I am glad that you think so, and I believe that I’d rather be by ourselves part of the time, till my father finds out something, if he can.”
Mr. Thorne, in the meantime, was meeting various difficulties. He had lost trace of people during all these years. Finally he put a carefully worded advertisement in the Chicago papers, by which X offered a considerable sum for definite information about certain matters. The names of Mr. and Mrs. Sampson were given with their supposed former address.
This brought results. It was toward the end of the summer, when Shirley was packing to go home from her long visit in Wisconsin, that Mr. Thorne came from Chicago with success written in his face. “Oh, you have found out!” gasped Sidney as she hurried toward him from the wooded nook just beyond the house, where she and Shirley had swung a hammock. Mrs. Thorne, who sat on the wide porch of the log mansion, with its gay Indian rugs and comfortable chairs, came smilingly down to join the others. For some time she had known of Sidney’s discovery, but as Sidney was so self-contained and cool about it by that time, she never did quite realize what the first shock had meant.
“Can you stand finding out that you are not a Sampson or a Standish, Sidney?” queried the smiling gentleman, brushing back his slightly graying hair as he removed his hat and sought a comfortable seat on the wide veranda.
“Oh, don’t tease me, Daddy! It’s too serious!”
“So it is, little girl. How shall I begin? Probably the best thing is to dash right into it and announce that you and Shirley were little twin babies.”
“Oh!” said Sidney and Shirley in one low breath. “Then,—” Sidney began, but put her hands to her face for a moment, taking them away to put her head down on Shirley’s shoulder as she had done once before; for Shirley was standing beside her.