“Oh, who cares about that?” cried Laura impatiently. “The main thing is that she will be here to-morrow.”
“Only a little over twelve hours to wait.”
The girls did not sleep very well that night, and they were up and dressed and at the dock almost an hour before the steamer was due.
They were so nervous that they could not stand still, and it was just as well that the Mary Ann was a little early that morning, or the dock would have been worn out completely, Connie declared.
“Oh, Billie, suppose she doesn’t come?” whispered Vi as the boat slid into the dock. “Suppose——”
“No suppose about it,” Billie whispered back joyfully. “Look, Vi! There she is.”
“But who is the man with her?” cried Laura suddenly, as Miss Arbuckle waved to them from the upper deck and then started down the narrow winding stairway, followed by a tall, rather stoop-shouldered man who seemed to the girls to have something vaguely familiar about him.
“He may not be with her,” Billie answered. But suddenly she gasped. Miss Arbuckle had stepped upon the dock with hands outstretched to the girls, and as the tall man followed her Billie got her first full look at his face.
It was Hugo Billings, the mysterious maker of fern baskets whom they had found in his hut in the woods!
As for the man, he seemed as much astonished as the girls, and he stood staring at them and they at him while Miss Arbuckle looked from one to the other in amazement.