“All safe, my boy, and if you are able to stand up, we’d better be taking your mother back to the hotel,” answered Mr. Donahue.
As he spoke, the roof of the old house crashed in and the four walls stood out bleak and desolate in the smoking ruins.
The Comet carried a big load that afternoon. For the first time in her life, old Mammy rode in an automobile, but the old woman, like her mistress, was too dazed to realize that she was skimming along the high road at the rate of thirty miles an hour.
On the way to the hotel, Billie heard Mr. Donahue say to Edward: “I didn’t know you were in the house or in the neighborhood, my boy.”
“I only arrived this morning. I was to stay away two or three days longer, but I went to your office in New York as you directed, with the message for your secretary, and while I was waiting a bunch of mail arrived. The letter on top was this. It may have been wrong, but I took it because you see I couldn’t help recognizing the handwriting as my father’s. Who directed it or where it came from, is a mystery.”
He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a letter which Billie recognized as the very one she had re-directed several days before.
“But where did it come from?” demanded Mr. Donahue in amazement.
“We found it under a little house in the woods,” she broke in, “and I sent it to your New York address, which is the one Papa gave me.”
“You are a jolly, clever young lady,” cried the older man delightedly, “and you can never know what a debt of gratitude we owe you.”
It was a lucky chance that Mr. Duffy’s motor car happened to pass before they reached the hotel, and some of the party were transferred to that roomy and capacious machine. So that the overloaded Comet did not, after all, create a sensation as it rolled up to the side entrance of the hotel.