"Oh, very, very far away, on an island off Central America," came the surprising answer.
"Do your relatives live there?" inquired Grace, gently.
"No, they all died with the fever, that is, Loved One did, and daddy was lost at sea. Reda thinks I had it, and she says I must not do things like other girls or it will come back and kill me, but I don't believe her now. Since I have known you girls I feel so much stronger and wiser," she finished quaintly, with a significant toss of her head.
"The idea of telling you you were sick, and scaring you into it,"
indignantly spoke Jennie, in whom an instant dislike for the sinister
Reda had taken root. "A good way to make a child sick, I should say.
But what right has she over you? Is she a relative?"
"A relative?" and Mary almost laughed. "No, indeed. Nothing but an old nurse, and not my real nurse either. You see, when granddaddy—as I call him—had to leave the tropics, we had to take the first steamer to get away, and I had no one to care for me after Loved One went, so we just had to accept Reda. Then Janos is her brother, I guess, or some sort of relative, and I could get along with her if he would stay away. I can't tell you the whole story, for it is granddaddy's secret, and I have promised him I would never, never tell anyone why we are up here in the mountains, and why I can't use my own name!"
Again that veil dropped over the soft dark eyes. No one felt like speaking then, for they noticed the girl swallowing hard to choke back the sorrow that threatened to overcome her.
"Well, here we are almost in." It was Jennie who broke the silence, as the boat, now out in the broad open lake, became one of the many turning in at nightfall. "And there are the boys waiting to land us. You don't suppose, Mary, that old woman will make trouble for you?" This with a show of anxiety at the rather difficult position the party now found themselves in.
"No, I am not a bit alarmed. They may think I have got lost, or I might have fallen in the water. Perhaps she and Janos would be glad if I never came back. Then they would have granddaddy all to themselves, and I suppose they would torture him to find out his secret. Oh! dear!" she sighed, "if it were not for him I believe I would just run away."
"You must never think of that," Jennie counseled, "unless of course those foreigners torment you. Cleo, you tell Andy to charge the car to your uncle, Mr. Dunbar, and be sure to say we are in a hurry."
Arrangements were made so promptly Mary was almost bewildered. Another wonder had suddenly come into the life of the timid little girl. She was actually riding in an automobile. How magical is the power of true friends!