“It couldn’t be—be their father!”
“I don’t see how he could have escaped and then hide there,” Barbara continued, as if trying to reason the matter out. “That would be too easy.”
“Yes, wouldn’t it?” agreed Cara. “And—the carving is really very fine. Mother has seen much of that work. She travelled all over Europe last year to finish up her sight-seeing, you know,” Cara made clear.
“Yes?” Babs answered abstractedly. She was not thinking of sight-seeing or Europe either.
“And she says,” continued the enthused Cara, “that this Italian work is really very good indeed.”
“Dad says so too. But I must hurry to dress,” Babs reminded herself. “No matter how we feel about the old ladies’ quilting bee, I suppose we’ve got to show up, much as we hate to.”
At this the girls separated, as their bath-houses were at different ends of the small pavilion, but when each emerged, dressed and ready to ride home in the small car that Cara had just obtained a license to drive, their conversation was resumed.
“You see,” Barbara pointed out, “how dreadful it would be if anything that we did would draw attention to this thing. I just couldn’t stand that.”
“But how could little Nicky come to harm?” Cara wanted to know. “He surely is innocent, and besides, isn’t something going to be done to reward him for risking his life to get oil to the lighthouse?”
“I hope so. I have written to Washington; Dad told me how to do it. But I suppose they get so many such letters I may never get a reply,” said Babs, a little dispiritedly.