THREE SMALL SURVIVORS
It did not take Uncle Tom very long, experienced as he was, to bring the
three children back to consciousness. As it was, they had been more
affected by the cold and the fright than anything else, for the raft,
crude as it was, had kept them above the surface of the waves and saved
their lives.
As the girls bent over them eagerly, helping Uncle Tom as well as they
could, the faint color came back to the pinched little faces, and slowly
the children opened their eyes.
"Oh, they are alive, bless 'em," cried Billie, jumping to her feet. But
the quick action seemed to terrify the children, and they cried out in
alarm. In a minute Billie was back on her knees beside them, looking at
them wonderingly.
"Why, what's the matter?" she asked, putting out her hand to the little
boy, who shrank away from her and raised an arm before his eyes. "Why,
honey, did you really think Billie would hurt a nice little boy like
you?"
But all three children had begun to cry, and Billie looked helplessly at
her chums.
Uncle Tom had spread a large rug on the floor and had laid the children
on it while he worked over them. Up to this time he had been on his knees
beside the girls, but now he got to his feet and looked down at them
soberly.
"Somebody's been mistreating 'em," he said, his eyes on the three
cowering, pathetic little figures. "Poor little mites--poor little mites!
Found 'em on a sort of raft, you say? Washed up by the waves?"
The girls nodded, and Billie, putting a tender arm around the little
fellow, succeeded in drawing him up close to her while Laura and Vi tried
to do the same with the little girls. Connie was watching her Uncle Tom.
"H'm," said the latter, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "Folks on the
ship probably--drowned out there. Poor little waifs. Kind of up to us to
take care of 'em, I reckon."
"Of course it is," cried Connie, jumping to her feet. "Uncle Tom, where
did Mother and Daddy go?"
"On, toward the house," said Uncle Tom, nodding his head in the direction
of the bungalow. "When they couldn't find you they got kind o' worried
and thought you must have made tracks for home."
"Here they come now," cried Laura, for through the windows she had caught
sight of Mr. and Mrs. Danvers hurrying along the walk toward the
lighthouse.
"Oh, I'm glad," said Billie, hugging the little boy to her and smoothing
his damp hair back from his forehead. The child had stopped crying and
had snuggled close to Billie, lying very still like a little kitten who
has found shelter and comfort in the midst of a wilderness. The soft
little confiding warmth of him very suddenly made Billie want to cry.
"Your mother will know what to do," she said to Connie.
"Mother always does," said Connie confidently, and a minute later opened
the door to admit two very much wind-blown, exhausted and very anxious
parents.
"Oh, kiddies, what a fright you gave us!" cried Connie's mother, looking
very pale and tired as she leaned against the door post while Mr. Danvers
patted her hand gently and tried not to look too much relieved. "Where
did you go? Why, girls----" She stopped short in absolute amazement and
bewilderment as she caught sight of Laura and Vi and Billie on the floor,
each with a child clasped in her arms. "Where did you get them?"
She did not wait for an answer. She flew across the room and, dropping to
her knees, gazed at the children who at this new intrusion had started
away from the girls and regarded her with wide, doubtful eyes.
"Why, you precious little scared babies, you!" she cried, pushing the
girls away and gathering the children to her. "I don't know where you
came from, but what you need is mothering. Where did they come from?" she
asked, looking up at Uncle Tom.
"From out there," said Uncle Tom gravely, waving his hand toward the spot
where the ship had gone down. Then he quickly told her and Mr. Danvers
what the girls had told him. They did not interrupt. Only, when he had
finished, Mrs. Danvers was crying and not trying to hide it.
"Oh, those poor, poor people!" she sobbed. "And these poor little
frightened, miserable children all, all there is left. Oh, I'll never get
over the horror of it. Never, never! John," she added, looking up at her
husband with one of those quick changes of mood that the girls had
learned to expect in her, "will you and Tom help me get the children
home? They mustn't be left like this in dripping clothes. They'll catch
their death of cold. What they need is a hot bath and something to eat,
and then bed. Poor little sweethearts, they are just dropping for sleep."
So Uncle Tom took one of the little girls, Mr. Danvers another, and
Connie's mother insisted upon carrying the little boy.
"Why, he's nothing at all to carry," she said, when her husband
protested. "Poor child--he's only skin and bones."
So the strange procession started for the bungalow, the girls, tired out
with nerve strain and excitement, bringing up the rear. But they did not
know they were tired. The mystery of the three strange little waifs
washed up to them by the sea had done a good deal to erase even the
horror of the wreck.
"And we haven't the slightest idea in the world who they really are or
whom they belong to," Connie was saying as they turned in at the walk.
"It is a mystery, girls, a _real_ mystery this time. And I don't know how
we'll solve it."
But they forgot the mystery for the time being in the pleasure of seeing
the waifs bathed and wrapped in warm things from the girls' wardrobes and
fed as only Connie's mother could feed such children.
Gradually the fear died out of the children's eyes, and once the little
boy even reached over timidly and put a soft, warm hand in Billie's.
"You darling," she choked, bending over to kiss the little hand. "You're
not afraid of Billie now, are you?"
The little girls, who were twins and as like as two peas, were harder to
win over. But by love and tenderness Connie's mother and the girls
managed it at last.
And then eyes grew drowsy, tired little heads nodded, and Connie's
mother, with a look at Mr. Danvers, who had been hovering in the
background all the time, picked up one of the little girls and started
for the stairs.
"I'm going to tuck them in bed," she said, speaking softly. "We can put
them in our room, John--in the big bed."
A few minutes later the girls stood in Mrs. Danvers' room, looking down
at three little flushed faces, three tousled heads that belonged to three
very sound-asleep little children.
Connie's mother tiptoed out of the room and motioned to the girls to
follow, but they lingered for a minute.
"Aren't they lovely?" asked Connie, with a catch in her voice.
"They're beautiful," said Laura. "Especially the little boy."
"And they ate," said Vi softly, "as if they had been half starved. Poor
little things--I wonder who they are?"
"Girls," said Billie gravely, "I suppose you will laugh at me when I tell
you, but ever since I first saw them I have had a strange feeling----"
"Yes," they said impatiently, as she paused.
"That I have seen them somewhere before," she finished, looking at them
earnestly. "And now, as they lie there I'm almost sure of it."
"Seen them before?" repeated Connie, forgetting in her astonishment to
lower her voice, so that the little boy stirred restlessly. Billie drew
them out into the hall.
"Come into our room," she said; and they followed her in wondering
silence.
"I wish you would say that all over again, Billie," said Vi eagerly, when
they had drawn their chairs up close to Billie. "You said you had seen
them before?"
"No, I said I thought I had seen them before," said Billie, frowning with
the effort to remember. "It seems foolish, I know----"
"But, Billie, if you feel like that you must have some reason for it,"
said Laura eagerly.
There followed a silence during which Billie frowned some more and the
girls watched her eagerly. Then she disappointed them by suddenly jumping
up and starting for the door.
"Well," she said, "I can't remember now. Maybe I will when I've stopped
trying to. Come on, Connie, let's help your mother with the dishes."
But Billie did not find the answer for several days. Meanwhile they had
received word from the boys that they had put into port the afternoon of
the great storm and had not been able to go out again until a couple of
days later. No news concerning the three waifs had come in.
The boys had received news of the wrecked ship, of course, and were
tremendously excited about it.
"You girls have all the luck, anyway," Chet wrote to Billie. "Just
think--if we had stayed over a few hours we would have seen the wreck
too."
Billie tore the letter up and flung it into the paper basket.
"Luck!" she had murmured, her face suddenly grown white as she gazed out
over the water that was brilliantly peaceful once more in the afternoon
sunlight. "He calls _that_ luck!"
The boys had promised to return in a couple of weeks and give the girls a
regular "ride in the motor boat." If it had not been for the waifs who
had so strangely been entrusted to them, the girls would have looked
forward more eagerly to the return of the boys.
As it was, they were too busy taking care of the sweet little girls and
beautiful little boy and falling in love with them to think much of the
boys one way or another except to be deeply thankful that they had
escaped disaster in the storm.
And then, when Billie had nearly forgotten that strange impression she
had had in the beginning of having seen the children before, suddenly she
remembered.
It was one night after the girls had gone to bed. They had been laughing
over some of the cunning things the children had been doing, and Laura
had been wondering how they would go about finding the relatives of the
children--if they had any--when suddenly Billie sat up in bed with a look
of astonishment on her face.
"Girls," she cried, "I know where I saw those children."
"Oh, where?" they cried, and then held their breath for her answer.
"In Miss Arbuckle's album!"