MAID MARY AWAKE
"We had better tell her," said Mrs. Dunbar to Cleo, an hour later,
after Cleo had talked things over with G-race, while she left Madaline
to entertain Mary. "As you say, my dear, it does look as if your
vacation story is going to have a very happy ending."
Cleo flitted back to her companions. They divined from her manner that
the hoped-for good news was to be "thrown on the screen."
"Mary," began Cleo, who had dropped in a safe coil on the rug at Mary's
feet, "are you prepared for the very biggest thing in all the world to
happen? Can you stand the most astonishing kind of news?" and she
managed to secure Mary's hand to give her confidence.
"Oh, yes, Cleo dear, but don't tell me if you are not sure? I have
been dreaming such glorious things since--you talked of--daddy!"
"It is just about him, Mary, I want to speak. He may be alive----"
"Oh, how do you know? Who has found him----"
"Don't become too excited now," pleaded Cleo, while Grace and Madaline
both closed in affectionately about Mary's chair. "Of course we cannot
be too positive, but Uncle Guy has wired he is bringing back--your
daddy!"
"Oh!" the sound was a sigh, a gasp, then Mary began to slip down deep
into the chair.
"Now, don't you dare faint!" called Madaline, with the magic way she
always exercised of averting evil through sheer innocent challenge.
"Here, Grace, hold her head while I fetch water," and while Grace
attempted to support the head Madaline had been fondling, Mary raised
it with a look of unspeakable joy.
"Oh, girls!" she murmured, "how did you do it?"
"Oh, we didn't," disclaimed Cleo. "No girls really could; we just
lived up to our laws and rules and inspirations, and all those powers
united to bring our happy result. It would be perfectly silly to say
girls could do such things."
"But we did all the same," came from Grace, "and it would be sillier to
say the rules and the laws and the inspirations did them. Wouldn't it?
You wrote the whole story and even sent Mary's picture to your uncle."
"But daddy!" Mary begged. "Tell me, where is he now? How did your
uncle find him?"
"Our uncle," corrected Cleo. "I am almost afraid to tell you this
part. The girls will say I was in the secret all the time, and I
wasn't, truly. Mary--you are my cousin!"
"She is not--no fair!" cried Grace, actually slamming a pillow on
Cleo's head. "I warned you long ago not to dare to claim her----" And
the thumping of soft pillows supplied the omission of words.
"At least let me tell it," said Madaline in mock scorn. "Be generous
enough to give us that much glory. You see, ladies and gentlemen (to
an imagined audience), this little girl," slamming Cleo with another
pillow, "wrote a letter to her cousin. Her cousin had found his
cousin, and his cousin made Mary Cleo's cousin, because Cleo's
cousin--was----"
Realizing Mary was not in a mood for such joking, Madaline apologized
with a kiss on the softly pinked cheek. "Mary-love," she confessed, "I
just did that to ward off tears. Cleo would have disgraced the scouts
in another moment."
"We got the most important clew in the old bamboo cane," said Cleo,
seriously. "That was literally stuffed with papers, and one was a
baptismal certificate, giving your name, Mary, as Marie Hastings
Dunbar."
"Dunbar!" repeated Mary, "and the men all called daddy Dunnie. That
was his name, Dunbar!"
"Yea, and Aunt Audrey has found out that Constance Hastings, your
mother's mother, is in one of the finest hotels in New York now! The
Hastings own the most famous orchid collection in this country."
"They are millionaires," began Mary, but her voice was almost scornful.
"Yes, I know. Aunt Audrey has talked with Mrs. Gilmore Hastings over
the telephone. She will be apt to take you from us, if you don't hold
tight."
"Never! Never! Never!" defied Grace. "She is our Mary--yes, cousin
Mary, for isn't Cleo's Aunt Audrey our Aunt Audrey--by vacation scout
laws?"
Only the girls that they were could have absorbed so many surprises at
a sitting, but such is the nature of nature's best product, and that
product is always lively, happy girls!
What happened between that time and next morning would take volumes to
relate, but it might as well be admitted that Jennie had to fairly camp
out in the hall that night to stop the talking, and it was away past
midnight when she succeeded. Even then it would be false to claim that
Mary actually slept.
Early in the evening Mrs. Dunbar had very carefully unfolded the story
to Professor Benson when he came down over the mountain in the car Mrs.
Dunbar had ordered. So that he, too, was somewhat prepared for the
astounding surprise. The return of Jayson Dunbar from the mystery of
orchid land seemed almost too wonderful, but the Professor admitted he
had always hoped Jay would "turn up."
"And every letter I wrote to mother I kept hinting that the glories of
Bellaire were actually taking root in my soul," said Cleo, as the girl
dressed next morning, almost unconscious of the task they were
performing. "Now she will understand the metaphor."
"And Michael is going to give us all a ride up to the studio before
breakfast," exclaimed Madaline. "He wants to try the car to make sure
it is all right."
"Try it on us," laughed Grace. Nevertheless she was the first one to
find the best seat, when the car directly honked at the door.
Reda was beautifully installed in her own room, and pompously accepting
the ministrations of Katie Bergen, when the girls found her at the
studio. How delightful it all was! Mary was speechless with sheer joy.
"It is perfectly glorious!" she kept exclaiming. "And to think that
daddy is coming! How can I believe it after all my dark days!"
"Girls! Let's have one more blissful look in the orchid room!" begged
Grace. "It won't be the same when others come."
Almost like a little procession they wended their way into the
conservatory. At the opening of the door they were almost overcome
with the perfume of the tropics that burst from the riot of glory there.
They looked from one bloom to another. Mary told them how Professor
Benson had made every sort of bulb bloom in the hope of finding the
lost treasure, the rarest orchid in the world. Then she explained why
she and Reda had gathered queer roots from which the botanist had
ground fertilizer, but that all of this had not brought forth the
priceless bloom.
They were reluctantly leaving when Madaline and Grace espied Mary's old
home-made doll. It was so quaint and queer they both sought to reclaim
it at once.
"Just look!" said Madaline. "What a funny old doll!"
"Isn't it jolly," added Grace, whose hand was on the discarded toy just
as Madaline picked it up.
"Why, the orchids have taken root in it, Mary," declared Grace. "See,
this sprout growing out of the arm!"
"Let me see!" almost cried Mary. "Oh, girls, it is it! It is the lost
orchid. Grandie had sewed it up in the doll! Look. See that stem!"
She was shouting almost wildly, for there, shooting from the broken arm
pit of the queer old hand-made doll was the unmistakable tendril of the
long sought for orchid.
"And we both found it at exactly the same minute!" announced Grace when
the full value of their discovery dawned upon them. "Cleo found an
adorable cousin, and you and I, Madie dear, found the lost orchid!"
Mary held the doll up to the astonished gaze of her companions. To
think that tiny green shoot should mean so much! That hidden in the
queer doll was a prize, almost beyond price, and for this prize
covetous men had followed Mary and her guardian from the tropics!
The girls stood there almost reverently.
And, unconsciously, Mary posed again as the Orphan of the Orchids!
Michael had been off to Crow's Nest for the professor and he was now
back with the splendidly improved man, a scholar and a scientist every
inch, who stood there in sight of his orchid room.
"Grandie! Grandie!" called Mary, "see, we have found it. You sewed it
up in the doll you made me! Don't you remember how you told me never
to part with that old rag baby?"
Like a flash it all came back! Yes, when the fever threatened his life
he had decided the child could keep her doll free from suspicion, and
in this he had sewed the precious orchid bulb.
"Girls! Girls!" he exclaimed, "am I dreaming? And I didn't betray my
trust! Dunnie, you may come back to us now; I have saved for you both
your darling child and your precious orchid!"
Meanwhile the greatest of great preparations were being completed at
Cragsnook. Only the freest use of telegraph had contented Guy Dunbar
to stay with the train that bore him and his famous cousin back to
civilization.
The train was in. Michael and Shep met it. Boxer had been compelled
to stay home though Michael wanted to take him, and all the girls "with
Mrs. Dunbar and Professor Benson stood on the porch, under the arch of
growing roses that welcomed the comers to Cragsnook.
"Don't get too excited, Mary," begged Madaline, always to be depended
upon for breaking too heavy a silence.
"There they come," shouted Cleo, and nothing but a firm hold laid on
her very skirts by Mrs. Dunbar kept the impetuous little scout from
running out too near the approaching motor.
Folded in her daddy's arms, Mary seemed for a moment miles and miles
away. Then she turned to the girls and tried to speak, but she only
managed to say:
"Girls, I am wide awake at last."
"Say, Audrey," said Guy Dunbar, after he had embraced his wife and
looked about him at the group of girls, "this surely is a real old home
week. I always knew you ought to run a boarding school!"
"Or a merry-go-round, Uncle Guy," Cleo supplemented. "This house, with
Aunt Audrey as leader, has been a regular picnic grounds all Summer."
"And to think I should literally fall over old coz, Jay Dunbar, in a
western lumber camp," said jolly Guy Dunbar, thumping his own brilliant
head.
Mary and her father (he did look like Guy Dunbar) were too spellbound
to notice their surroundings. But as quickly as he could manage it
Professor Benson spoke to the wanderer. "It's like the real page in
our old log, Dunnie," said the professor, "and your precious Spiranthes
Corale has been found. I lost it, but Mary's, friends have recovered
it and now you are the famous explorer you set out to become." And he
held up the quaint doll with the miraculous green shoot stealing
through its arm pit.
"Some little Girl Scouts!" declared Guy Dunbar, leading the way to the
house.
"How shall we end it?" asked Cleo. "Mary's daddy is found, the orchid
is found, new cousins are found--oh, girls! I have so many wonderful
endings for our vacation story we shall have to vote on the fade-out!"
she decided, while the girls fell into line for a Scout parade to
victory.
And the joys of that wonderful reunion must occupy our own interest in
these self-same little girls until we meet them again in the next
volume, to be entitled, THE GIRL SCOUTS AT SEA CREST--OR THE WIG WAG
RESCUE.