It was indeed Maria Cortinas, whose box of jewels Billie and Nancy had once so faithfully guarded.
Those of you who have read the first of these stories, entitled “The Motor Maids’ School Days,” will recall the adventures that befell the four young girls after they came into possession of that mysterious package. You will remember, too, Maria’s mother, the wonderful old Spanish woman, Mrs. Ruggles, who kept the sailors’ inn on the shore. Maria was not only gifted with beauty. She possessed a splendid voice and was now an opera singer of much renown in Europe. But not Billie herself could have been more modest than was this fortunate young woman.
“Maria Cortinas!” they cried, enchanted with her graciousness and beauty.
“May I not kiss you all around?” she said, proceeding to do so and leaving a bouquet in the hand of each young girl as she embraced her warmly.
“How good it is to see you again,” she said, “and how sweet to hear the voices of my own home people. Oh, but I am lonesome for West Haven sometimes, and for my old home. I never seem to remember that South America ever existed.”
“And your mother?” asked Billie.
“Dear mother can hardly wait to see you,” she answered. “I am homesick sometimes, but she is homesick always. Sometimes I try to make her go back and open her inn again and cook. You know she always loved to cook.”
It seemed very fine to the girls and Miss Campbell, too, that Maria Cortinas was not ashamed that her mother had cooked many a big dinner for West Haven picnic parties which drove down to the inn. Would they ever forget that wonderful dinner they had eaten at the old inn during the famous Hallowe’en house party at the St. Clairs’?
“But where is your mother?” asked Nancy.
“She has been laid up with rheumatism for weeks. The London climate doesn’t seem to agree with her, but she will stay here while I am singing.”