“Miss Smartie!”
“I declare, Ned, you looked just like a half-drowned pussy-cat yourself when Doro hauled you ashore.”
“Yes,” complained Edna, “you others would have left me to swim out as best I might alone—no doubt of that. It is always Doro who comes to the rescue.”
Dorothy smiled half-heartedly. She did not join the general cross-fire of joking and repartee. She could not get the wan little face of Celia Moran out of her mind—that wistful little smile of hers—while she seemed to hear again the sweet little voice say: “An’ I’m jes’ the cutest little thing you ever see!”
But Dorothy was afraid that, as cute as she was, the ogress would be too much for her!
“That’s just what that Hogan woman is—an ogress,” thought Dorothy.
Celia had been woefully afraid of Mrs. Hogan; yet how brave she had been, too!
“Somehow I’ll find her brother—Tom Moran—for her,” thought Dorothy. “I will! I must!”