When breakfast was over, and Sandy turned loose again to play with Puppums and Florence, to whom she had taken a violent fancy, Louise packed a market-basket with everything a starving family might need. Then she found her purse, summoned Winona, and they took the rowboat and went forth, Sandy and Puppums in the bottom of it.
They rowed along the west branch, a narrow stream that doubled at right angles from the branch the camps were on. It was lined with pretty summer cottages for a part of the way, then after that, at the very end, came a part that was filled with poor people who had squatted there. But long before they came to the poorest part Sandy desired to land.
“Here we is!” she said cheerfully, at a prosperous-looking dock about a third of the way up.
“Not here, dearie,” said Louise. “It’s probably some place where the poor child’s been fed,” she added aside to Winona.
“We may as well get out, though, mayn’t we?” suggested Winona. “Maybe they can tell us where she comes from.”
They tied the boat and got out, and walked down a deep lane for a while. Presently they came to a large white house in the middle of a couple of acres of half-yard, half-lawn looking land.
The doors and windows were all wide open, but there was no one to be seen. Sandy walked into the hall with an assured tread, took a long breath, and called at the top of her lungs, “Vicky! Vick-ee!”
The girls stood at the door and waited, ready to apologize for their charge’s rudeness whenever somebody might appear. In about five minutes, during which Sandy continued to shout, they heard a light, slow step along the upper hall. Presently a slim, dark, rather pretty little girl of about eleven scuffed down the stairs. She had on a kimono over her nightgown, though it was quite late in the morning.
“That you, Sand?” she called as she came. “Goodness, you’re up early!”
“This is Vicky,” Sandy explained to the girls over her shoulder. “Vicky! I’ve had two baths!”