"Mother!" he cried. "Oh, my mother!"
CHAPTER XXIV
MYSTERY EXPLAINED
The girls stared for a moment, dazed, bewildered. Stared at the dark head bent in such passionate tenderness over the gray one, stared at the old hands patting the broad young shoulders, tremblingly, joyfully, incredulously, then, with a stifled gasp, turned and fled.
Betty closed the door softly and followed the girls into their own room where they sank down on arms of chairs or tables or the edge of the bed—any place—and went on staring, only this time at each other.
"Betty Nelson," Mollie broke out at last, her eyes dark and wide, her voice awed, "did you ever in your life hear of such a thing?"
"Of course I never did," answered Betty, her lips trembling, her eyes shining and wet. "Not since my fairy-story days, anyway," she added softly.
"But how," Grace demanded, still too dazed to think clearly, "can Mrs. Sanderson's son be William Mullins?"
"Goodness! how do we know?" returned Mollie, wiping two tears from the end of her nose. "It's all the biggest kind of a m-mystery, anyway. Oh, dear, has anybody got a handkerchief?" as two other tears threatened to make their appearance. "I didn't know I had it in me to be such a goose."