"And you can come back with me, Kitty," begged Julia. "I have a big house and you can have a room to yourself until you are ready to go to school as Mrs. Alton wishes to arrange."
"And Kitty," said Louise, when the bewildered child was quiet enough to listen, "you need not worry about the hundred dollars Miss Hannah refuses to pay you for you own a lot of property on Luna Land."
"Aunt Hannah's property!" she gasped. "I knew it. I'll run her off the place, but I'll build a nice little house for good old Uncle Pete."
"Here's your bag," said Grace; "don't lose it."
"Oh, wait, girls, sit down until I give you your stockings and things." They dropped down on the terrace, and she dragged the things from her bag. She drew a purse from the very bottom of the satchel, and looked around before she opened it.
"Now wait," she said again, biting her thin lips. Then she pulled out a piece of yellow paper from a rusty leather purse.
"Our fire-bug threat," exclaimed Louise. "How did you get that?"
"I wanted to tell you long ago, I was the Weasle, but it wasn't all my fault. Aunt Hannah said if I acted queer folks would shun me, and then I didn't have to worry so about hiding Royal.
"When I got started at it, it seemed like fun. I had no girl friends, and I liked to scare the others, so I used to fix fires on the beach, and let them get fanned into flames by the wind. But I never set fire to chicken coops, and those other places. I guess robbers did that. Then, as soon as you girls came around, and acted so brave about it, I saw it was more fun to have friends than to scare them off," she finished with an expression of genuine contrition.
"Well, it's all right now, Kitty, and you have been very brave to watch so faithfully over Royal. That was good scouting," said Isabel.