Billie put her hand in her pocket and felt the pieced-together letter. It almost seemed like a bad dream now.
"So you decided to come back to us, Nancy?" she asked, trying to smile naturally.
"If I almost passed away from homesickness in one night, how should I have borne it for—for longer?" answered Nancy, flushing.
"We missed you terribly," was all Billie could trust herself to say as she hurried to her room to take off her wet things.
Just then Onoye sounded the Japanese chimes to announce that luncheon was served and presently they were all assembled around the table.
But never a word did Nancy say about the torn letter which some one had so carefully pieced together.
CHAPTER XV.
THE ANCIENT CITY OF SLEEP.
"How would four young parties and another younger party, who claims to be old and rheumatic, but isn't, like to take a trip?" asked Mr. Campbell one evening at dinner.
Through the inky curtain of blackness that had for days overcast the skies the sun had at last burst with a radiance that seemed twice as great to unaccustomed eyes. From somewhere a life-giving breeze had sprung up and driven away the vapors. Back rolled the walls of mist and fog, and in a few hours the world became a smiling paradise of flowers and of grass and foliage of intensest green.