“Why, you precious little scared babies, you!” she cried, pushing the girls away and gathering the children to her. “I don’t know where you came from, but what you need is mothering. Where did they come from?” she asked, looking up at Uncle Tom.
“From out there,” said Uncle Tom gravely, waving his hand toward the spot where the ship had gone down. Then he quickly told her and Mr. Danvers what the girls had told him. They did not interrupt. Only, when he had finished, Mrs. Danvers was crying and not trying to hide it.
“Oh, those poor, poor people!” she sobbed. “And these poor little frightened, miserable children all, all there is left. Oh, I’ll never get over the horror of it. Never, never! John,” she added, looking up at her husband with one of those quick changes of mood that the girls had learned to expect in her, “will you and Tom help me get the children home? They mustn’t be left like this in dripping clothes. They’ll catch their death of cold. What they need is a hot bath and something to eat, and then bed. Poor little sweethearts, they are just dropping for sleep.”
So Uncle Tom took one of the little girls, Mr. Danvers another, and Connie’s mother insisted upon carrying the little boy.
“Why, he’s nothing at all to carry,” she said, when her husband protested. “Poor child—he’s only skin and bones.”
So the strange procession started for the bungalow, the girls, tired out with nerve strain and excitement, bringing up the rear. But they did not know they were tired. The mystery of the three strange little waifs washed up to them by the sea had done a good deal to erase even the horror of the wreck.
“And we haven’t the slightest idea in the world who they really are or whom they belong to,” Connie was saying as they turned in at the walk. “It is a mystery, girls, a real mystery this time. And I don’t know how we’ll solve it.”
But they forgot the mystery for the time being in the pleasure of seeing the waifs bathed and wrapped in warm things from the girls’ wardrobes and fed as only Connie’s mother could feed such children.
Gradually the fear died out of the children’s eyes, and once the little boy even reached over timidly and put a soft, warm hand in Billie’s.
“You darling,” she choked, bending over to kiss the little hand. “You’re not afraid of Billie now, are you?”