“And I thought I could trust him, Billie, when I let him have that money in advance.”

“But you can. He will be back, of course.”

“What earthly reason could he have for staying away, except to take my place? Don’t you think it’s a good deal easier life to live with a rich old grandmother, even if she is a scold, than to slave down here as an engineer and a porter and anything else that happens to come along and take insults from people?”

“But I thought you liked it?”

“I did, but not forever. Of course, I shall telegraph Grandmamma or Clarence at once and let them know he is an impostor.”

“No, you won’t,” cried Billie so suddenly that she surprised herself. “No, no, Edward, you couldn’t do that. That wouldn’t be honest. You gave him your promise, didn’t you, to look after his work until he came back. I am sure you would regret it very, very much if you didn’t. If he had not meant to come back, he would never have called me up on the telephone. You see, it wasn’t necessary. They expected to stay several days, didn’t they? But he knew I was going to be at Mr. Duffy’s lodge that afternoon, and although he seemed in a tremendous hurry, he called me up to ask me to give you that message. You are to represent him,” she repeated, “as you promised. I am sure he meant every word he said. Please, Edward, do wait until you get word from him. How can you distrust any one who looks so exactly like you? It would be like disbelieving in one’s self.”

Edward did not reply. With an angry, impatient gesture he left her, to bring the car out of the garage. Presently she climbed in beside him.

“It won’t hurt you to do something for some one else,” she went on. “I don’t want to preach, of course, but I’d just like to ask you if you ever have, that you can remember, really made a sacrifice for any one?”

“I can’t say I have,” said Edward. “Perhaps I’ve never had the opportunity.”

“Do you remember that night when we didn’t find the dead man, you told me you had been afraid all your life of daylight and dark and draughts and people and poverty? This is such a splendid chance to show you are not afraid of anything in the world, even of keeping your promise, Edward.”

“But,” he exclaimed, “I have no money, Billie.”

“Take out sailing parties and launch parties and carry baggage and do the things Edward did. Papa always said the proudest moment of his life was the first time he earned five dollars.”

“By Jove, it would be rather nice,” he said after a pause. “Grandmamma has always treated me like an infant, you know. When she finds out I can earn a living, perhaps she’ll have a little more respect for me.”

“I’m sure of it,” said Billie, climbing into the back seat as they drew up in front of the hotel. “It’s a dangerous thing,” she said to herself as she sank down upon the cushions, “to wish for a thing unless you really want it, because if your wish comes true, you are just as apt as not to unwish it, and then things are in a muddle.”

CHAPTER XIII.—IN THE DEEP WOODS.

“Billie, is this the road to the left?” asked Edward Paxton, suddenly.

Billie had just time to say she thought it was the road, they had never been over it but once and then at night, when Mary and Nancy pounced upon her.

“We know the secret,” they whispered, pointing to Edward.

“You’ve guessed,” she replied, relieved that she was no longer burdened with a secret she had longed to discuss with her friends. And they did discuss it in low voices from every point of view. It was impossible to explain Edward l’Estrange’s mysterious telephone message. It did look very much as though he had taken a mean advantage, but Billie believed in him and so did the other two girls.

So absorbed were these young people in their whispered conversations, Edward and Elinor on the front seat and the others on the back, that they had not noticed that the road they had taken was rapidly degenerating from a hard beaten highway into a sandy trail.

The land about them had a lonely, uninhabited look. The stillness was oppressive. Almost imperceptibly, the few sparse palm trees and scraggy pines which stood far apart like people on the outskirts of a crowd, began to grow more closely together in little friendly groups. Then the groups joined and became companies and the companies a multitude, and the multitude a vast legion whose branches interlocked so closely as to form a roof over their heads.

It was hard pulling along the deep sandy ruts, but the Comet uttered no complaints until suddenly with a groan that was almost human, his wheels sank hub-high in the sand and he could go no more.

“For heaven’s sake,” cried Billie, “this can’t be the road to Virginia’s.”

The motor had stopped whirring and the place was as still as death.

They climbed out of the car and Edward, with his hands in his pockets, stood looking gravely at the half-sunken wheels.

“I’m afraid I’ve got you into a deuced lot of trouble,” he exclaimed remorsefully. “I ought to have been watching the road instead of talking. I’m a poor chauffeur.”

Billie secretly thought he was and she wished with all her heart that she had run the car that morning. But chauffeurs, like professional singers, are apt to criticise each other, and Billie had great confidence in her powers as engineer of the Comet.

“Now we have relieved him of our weight, maybe he’ll pull out,” said hopeful Mary, pointing to the motor. “Why don’t you start him up and see?”

“Crank him up, Edward,” called Billie, jumping into her own particular seat at the wheel. Somehow she never could feel at home in the other seats.

The machinery began to whir and the poor Comet strained and tugged until his one “all-seeing eye,” as the girls had called it, was almost starting from its socket and his loyal engine heart was nigh to bursting its bonds.

“It’s no good breaking a blood vessel, you poor old dear,” exclaimed Billie, patting the red cushion beside her as she stopped the motor. “Just you wait and we’ll see if we can’t find another way out of this hole.”

The others laughed. It was always funny to hear their friend talk to her machine as if a heart really did beat in his throbbing mechanism. But after all, it wasn’t a joking matter when they began to look about them. It seemed as if the only thing to do was to abandon the Comet and walk back to the main road. But Billie was not one to give up so easily, and before she would consent to a general retreat, her friends knew she would try everything she could think of to release the machine.

“I suppose we’ll have to foot it,” said Edward with a sigh, glancing at his watch.

Billie flushed. Somehow this lazy boy irritated her. She had been brought up by a man who thought nothing of spanning a great chasm with a bridge or tunneling through mountains for his railroads. There was something very like contempt in her heart for this young man who played tunes on the piano and thought chiefly of his own health.

“Foot it, indeed!” she exclaimed, “and leave the Comet here to be swallowed in quicksands?”

“But it isn’t really that, you know,” he answered. “Besides, what can we do? We can’t push the thing out and this sun is awfully hot.”

“You don’t mean to say you’re going to give up without a struggle?” cried Nancy.

Even Elinor, who was Edward’s champion at all times, was not pleased.

“If you want to watch us work, you can,” went on Billie, making a great effort not to be too rude.

Edward’s face fairly burned with shame.

“I—I didn’t mean that,” he answered. “Of course, I’ll do anything you say. I was only thinking of you.”

“He was not,” thought Billie. “He was thinking of his own delicate constitution.”

But she did not voice her thoughts and tried to swallow her indignation. Never had she met anything in trousers so utterly lacking in spirit.

Having decided to remain and see the Comet through, the question was what would they do? Billie sat down on the ground and began to think.

Finally Edward approached her almost timidly and volunteered a suggestion.

“I saw an ox cart stalled in some mud once, in England, and they got it out with some boards and a cross log. I think we could manage this if we could find the boards.”

“But where can we get any boards?” asked Elinor hopelessly.

No one could answer this difficult question, and they were beginning to think that after all, they would have to submit to the easiest way and foot it back to the main road, several miles away.

“A road is obliged to lead somewhere,” said Mary Price at last. “Else how did it happen to be at all? Why not ‘foot it,’ as Edward calls it, down this path a bit and see what we come to?”

Billie, already ashamed of the temper she had just displayed for the second time in her acquaintance with Edward, jumped up.

“Wise little Mary,” she exclaimed, “I think that would be a splendid idea.”

“We’ll probably be eaten up by boa constrictors,” said Nancy with a groan, “but come ahead. They’d be just as vicious here as farther on, I suppose.”

“And tarantulas and scorpions,” said Elinor, following the others.

As they ran along, they noticed the trail gradually narrowed into a path as if a wagon were in the habit of coming to a sudden stop and the driver got out and walked the rest of the way.

The outskirts of the forest had been as still as the entrance to a tomb. The interior was filled with noises. The songs of the wild birds, the humming of insects, all kinds of inexplicable cracklings and creakings, as if unseen things were creeping about.

“Ugh,” exclaimed Nancy. “I’m frightened. Please let’s go back.”

“Oh, oh, oh!” shrieked Elinor, wringing her hands.

A long green snake had wriggled across the path almost over the toe of her shoe in its haste to hide itself in the undergrowth.

“Oh, Elinor,” said Billie, filled with remorse. “I’m so sorry. I remember now how you loathe snakes. Do let’s go back.”

“Haloo-o-o,” called Edward, who had run on ahead, “you were right, Mary. Roads must lead to something.”

Filled with curiosity, in spite of their horror of the creeping, crawling things they felt sure the forest was alive with, they hastened down the path which turned abruptly to the right, where a clearing had been made, in the middle of which stood a little wooden shack of the most primitive character, but still with a certain individual look as if the one who had erected it must have put into it some of his own personality.

And why was it that this crude little hut in the forest should have reminded Edward of an English cottage?

The door opened straight on the ground and from under the low overhanging roof peeped one little window. A jasmine vine had been trained against the wall of the house and a hedge of acacia bushes formed a sort of peaceful barrier between the clearing and the advancing hosts of giant pine trees.

The door was open and they walked in boldly.

Inside were a few pieces of furniture, a cot, an old table and a chair.

“This must be a hermit’s house,” said Edward, who had forgotten all about himself in the excitement and interest of the adventure.

“He must be dead or something, then,” observed Nancy, looking about the room curiously. “Because I can see with half an eye that no one has lived here for some time.”

“It’s a snug little place,” said Elinor. “It’s almost cosy with this solid wall of green around it. Now, who do you suppose lived here and why did he do it?”

“He must have had some very good reason for hiding himself in this forest,” put in Billie, “but I hope if he is still living, he won’t begrudge us a few planks from his dwelling, and if he’s dead his spirit won’t rise up and haunt us for disturbing his earthly dwelling place.”

“Look,” cried Mary, who had been standing in the doorway.

“What is it?” demanded the others.

“I’m almost sure I saw some one. It was a man. He stood out against the green just for an instant. There was something white on his head like a bandage or a handkerchief.”

“Which way?” they asked, hurrying into the yard and scanning the green wall on all sides.

“He seemed to be over there, but I am not sure. Perhaps I just imagined it after all.”

“Looking through the woods like this I could imagine I saw almost anything,” said Billie, making a frame of her hands and peering into the forest. “People and animals and things.”

Here and there a golden sunbeam, slanting through the foliage, cast a flickering, dancing shadow on the trunks of the trees.

“They do look like people,” said Mary thoughtfully, gazing at the multitude of trees which seemed to be elbowing and jostling each other for first place. Standing aloof among them was that slim dandy, the magnolia, his black trunk gleaming richly, like a gentleman’s frock coat. Next came the rusty gray trunk of the vagabond pine which wanders like a Gypsy into all lands; and beside him, like a good-natured comrade, grew the palm, spreading his fan-shaped leaves in every direction, like so many friendly hands outstretched in welcome.

Suddenly a bird, flying quite low, came so close to Elinor’s face that she almost fell backwards. Perched on a corner of the roof he regarded them with two bright beady eyes, as a singer standing behind the footlights might take stock of his audience. Then swelling out his little bosom and throwing back his head, he began to sing.

“It’s Dick, the mocking bird,” whispered Elinor. “I’m certain of it. You see, he’s almost tame.”

CHAPTER XIV.—THE MOCKING BIRD.

“Was there ever anything to equal that?” cried Billie, breaking the silence which had settled upon them during the concert.

“The darling little fellow,” exclaimed Elinor. “Anybody would suppose he had come to make a morning call on a sick friend and give him a concert to cheer him up.”

“Virginia’s house must be near here, because she told me herself Dick never went far from home,” Mary observed.

“There’s no telling,” answered Billie. “I’ve lost all sense of direction in this place; but I think we’d better get to work,” she answered, glancing at her blue enamel watch. “It’s eleven o’clock. Edward, do you think we could knock some of the planks off the lower part of the house without doing much damage?”

Edward, who had been lying flat on his back in a day dream, pulled himself together and jumped up quickly.

“Of course,” he said apologetically, “if we can find anything to do it with.”

“Perhaps, if the hermit built his own house, he has a few tools,” said Mary. “Let’s look in and see, at any rate.”

Sure enough, they did find an old rusty hatchet standing in one corner of the room. The house had been built on a slight foundation consisting of four pine stumps about a foot high and the space from the floor to the ground level was covered with planking. It was these boards Billie’s quick thought had designed to remove.

Warming to the work, Edward hammered vigorously, but it was very difficult to release the thick boards which had been secured with long nails. Edward’s slim, piano-playing hands seemed hardly strong enough for the task and after the top nails had been loosened, the four girls, sitting in a row beside him, each took hold and began to pull. The rusty nails clung to the wood with irritating obstinacy and then after all gave way unexpectedly, as obstinate things and people are apt to do. Over they went on their backs in a laughing, giggling confusion of skirts and feet, with the plank on top of them.

They sat up rubbing the dust from their eyes.

Then with wild shrieks they jumped to their feet and fled in every direction, Edward with them. There curled up under the house, his head raised, ready to strike, was a long gray and green snake.

“Oh, dear, oh dear!” cried Elinor, while Edward shivered with disgust, and the other girls pressed together with feelings of terror. How were they not to know that hideous reptiles and beasts were not around them everywhere in this wild place?

But the snake, evidently much relieved that matters were no worse, glided off in the bushes.

“I hope his wife isn’t around,” groaned Nancy. “They always have a wife about somewhere.”

“I don’t see her,” said Edward, coming resolutely forth and seizing the hatchet. “Shall we get this next board off and finish the thing as soon as possible? This is a deucedly wild place to be in without any weapon but a rusty hatchet.”

With feelings of more or less repugnance they finally loosened the second board. Placing one on top of the other, so that all five of the party could lend a hand in carrying them back to the motor, they started down the path.

“What’s that?” exclaimed Mary, looking back.

“What’s what?” they demanded in a chorus, almost dropping the boards in their nervousness.

“Under the house.”

“Not another snake?” shrieked Elinor.

“No, no; it’s a box, I think.”

“Let’s leave it,” said Elinor. “It’s none of our concern. Probably love letters of the hermit.”

But, strange to say, as if a will stronger than his own impelled him, Edward shifted his end of the board to one of the others and walked back to the house.

“It is a box,” he called, moving the object with his foot. “Shall I bring it along?”

The girls laid the boards on the ground to consider. Elinor had worked up a romantic tale in her head about the box which she now imparted to her friends.

“The hermit who lived here,” she said, “was probably disappointed in love. He built a house in the woods and put his love letters in the corner stone——”

“Which was a cedar post—” interrupted Nancy.

“And when he died,” went on Elinor.

“But how do you know he is dead?” they demanded.

“If he were not dead, he’d be living there still, like the old woman who lived on the hill,” broke in Nancy.

The others laughed. It did not seem unkind somehow to make a little innocent fun of the poor, dead, imaginary hermit who lived such an uncomfortable life for his lost love.

“If you don’t think it’s highway robbery,” observed Billie, “bring it along. Having walked off with two boards, why pause at boxes?”

“A deserted box under a deserted house in a deserted wood should belong to the first person who found it,” said Elinor with conviction.

The box, which turned out to be an old cigar box with the lid tacked on, was accordingly placed on top of the board with the hatchet, and once more the procession started on its way.

“We look like a lot of pall bearers at a funeral,” said Nancy breathlessly as they trudged along.

At last they reached the Comet. It seemed an age since they had left him wallowing in the sand, and his one great eye, which at night glared so gloriously, now looked at them with mild reproach.

“The first thing to do is to find a log,” said Edward, proceeding to look for one.

The girls were surprised at his sudden energy when he appeared presently dragging a fallen pine tree after him. Having got it across the road, he chopped it to a proper length. The two boards he placed under the hind wheels of the motor car, the ends being slightly raised by the pine crossbeam.

“We’ll have to run the car backwards,” he said, “because, of course, if we try to go on, we’ll have to turn around eventually.”

Billie had cranked up and was already sitting in the chauffeur’s seat. She was beginning to see the usefulness of Edward’s plan now. Once more the Comet struggled and groaned in his effort to climb out of the sand pit, but without moving an inch.

“It’ll have to be the front wheels or nothing,” said Edward, wiping the perspiration from his brow as he carried the two boards and the crossbeam to the front and placed them under the car.

This time, with a mighty strain, the Comet rolled slowly onto the boards, went the full length and promptly sank again into the sand. But each time he responded promptly to the “board treatment,” as Billie called it, and after infinite patience and energy they finally pulled him to harder ground.

“What shall we do now?” asked Nancy. “We’re only getting deeper into the woods.”

“We can’t turn around,” answered Billie. “We’ll just have to ride over bush and brake, I suppose, and follow the path.”

“Sound the horn, then,” said Elinor, “to scare away the animals,” and as the honk, honk rang out in the stillness the birds and beasts who lived in the woods must have thought some terrible new creature had come to disturb their haunts.

It was a slow ride they took that morning along the trail. The Comet picked his way cautiously, crushing vegetation under his iron wheels, like the car of Juggernaut riding over its victims, while the Motor Maids and Edward Paxton ducked their heads frequently to avoid being hit with vines and branches.

Past the hermit’s house they went, past the enclosure and still the path persevered. They could trace it far in front of them. The trail had been carefully and deliberately made, evidently. Trees had been felled on each side and vines and plants torn away, and although a new vegetation had grown up, the path was still open.

Except for the noise made by the wheels of the motor car as it passed over bracken and fern and all the varied undergrowth of a great forest, there was not a sound. The woods were deadly quiet. The birds had stopped singing; even, the insects ceased to buzz. The quiet was terrible.

“I feel,” whispered Mary, “as if everything in the place was waiting for something to happen. Do you notice there isn’t a sound? The birds are too frightened to sing. I have heard that a poisonous snake could hypnotize a whole forest like this.”

No one replied to this unpleasant suggestion. There was a long, uneasy silence. Then, suddenly, the Comet gave a swift backward movement like a terrified horse. Right in his path crouched a creature which might, in that shady twilight spot, have been taken for a good-sized cat. But his body was spotted, each spot outlined with an uneven circle of black, and his tawny eyes gleamed more fiercely than any cat’s eyes ever gleamed.

“It’s a leopard!” whispered Billie, as she backed the Comet slowly along the path.

CHAPTER XV.—OUT OF THE WILDERNESS.

Billie reached mechanically for the rubber bulb and squeezed it again and again. The honk-honk rang out in the forest like a cry for help, and the leopard shivered where he crouched as if this unmelodious music jarred on his nerves.

Suddenly with a flying leap, he landed in the branches of a tree beside the motor. Billie never knew how she had the presence of mind to start the car. She only knew that they were going as fast as possible on that encumbered path and that the leopard, not counting on this swiftly moving object, had jumped again, grazed the motor and landed just back of them.

Perhaps it was Mary’s ear-piercing shriek which frightened him, or perhaps it was the red motor itself, which may have seemed to him a newly created animal with a whirring, bristling noise that made his nerves tingle. At any rate, instead of terrifying them again by jumping into the branches over their heads, he crept behind, half cautiously, but still ready to leap at the first opportunity.

“Keep up the horn, for heaven’s sake, and make as much noise as you can,” cried Elinor. “They can be frightened, I know, by loud noises.”

Edward on his knees beside Billie, worked the horn until his fingers ached, and the girls gave Indian yells and hooted and yodeled until they were exhausted.

For fully five minutes they rolled over the carpet of pine needles along the trail and the leopard dropped farther and farther off, until finally he slunk into the bushes. The intervals of hooting and calling grew longer and longer, and at last they rested. Mary, only, kept watch, kneeling backwards in the seat in a prayerful attitude.

“We’ll be out of this dreadful place in a moment now,” Billie was saying, when suddenly, there was a blood-curdling shriek. A shot rang out in the stillness, and with a strange vibrant noise that sounded like the echo of the base string of a ’cello, the leopard jumped high into the air and fell backward in the path just behind them.

Billie, with a very white face indeed, stopped the car and turned to see who had saved their lives.

The leopard was still quivering in the death-throes when they reached him, but it had been a clean shot straight through his body and it was only a moment before he lay stiff and stark before them.

“But who killed him?” sobbed Nancy, quite unnerved now that the danger was past.

“Yes, who?” they asked each other.

But there was no one in sight. Whoever had done the deed had slipped quietly away without waiting to be thanked.

“Hello,” called Edward, “come out, won’t you?” and his voice echoed through the place and came back to them like some one else’s.

“I wish we had some way to thank him,” said Billie, “but as we haven’t, let’s be moving. The sooner we get out of this wood, the better. There’s no telling what will happen next.”

“Shall we take this beast along?” asked Edward with a tone of disgust in his voice, that brought to Billie’s mind a remembrance of that evening, not long before, when he could not hide his terror of death and blood.

“No, no,” put in Elinor, who had a strong sense of justice. “His skin should belong to the one who killed him. He isn’t our trophy.”

“I’m sure I don’t want it,” ejaculated Mary, jumping into the car. “Do hurry and let’s be off.”

Once more they were on their way. After a long interval of silence, Mary continued:

“This is like an enchanted wood in a fairy tale. It is full of goblins and elves, wicked fairies and poisonous snakes and wild beasts.”

“I don’t mean to interrupt your poetic train of thought,” said Nancy, “but I’m certainly thankful at this moment that there is no smile on the face of that dead tiger.”

They all laughed but Billie. The woods were thinning now and the relief from the strain of the last two hours made them light-headed.

“My beloved friends,” exclaimed Billie finally, as the motor car slid into a real road, and the great wood bristled behind them, black and ominous, “oh my beloved friends, we are out of the wilderness at last. And it’s no thanks to me that we’ve all escaped alive. It was wicked, wicked of me,” she went on, choking to keep back her tears.

“What was wicked of you, Billie, dear?” asked Elinor, moved at the sight of her friend’s remorse.

“Not to have followed Edward’s advice and walked back the other way. It was wicked and stubborn of me. I can’t forgive myself.”

Not one of her friends had ever seen Billie so moved as she was now. Her gray eyes were filled with tears and her generous, finely shaped lips quivered painfully.

“Oh, Billie, dearest Billie,” they cried, standing up and leaning over the seat while she bent her head to hide her tears, “don’t blame yourself. It was everybody’s fault. We agreed with you that it was right, didn’t we?” they asked each other.

“Yes, yes,” they cried, and Elinor especially pressed her cheek to her friend’s shoulder. Billie seemed dearer to her now than ever before, and all the morning a little verse had been running through her head:

    “Oh,  blessings  on  that  falling  out
    Which  all  the  more  endears,
    When  we  fall  out  with  those  we  love
    And  kiss  again  with  tears.”

“Don’t cry, Billie,” said Edward. “I think we’ve had a great experience. Nobody was hurt and we did the things we started out to do. We’ve saved the Comet and we are on the road to Virginia’s. Don’t you recognize this place?”

“It is the same,” replied Billie, comforted by the reassurance of her friends and smiling away her tears. “It’s the very road we took that day when we came up from the lake.”

Already they could see the avenue of pines and as they turned in, the sunlight gleamed quite cheerfully on the old white house at the far end.

“Virginia will have to go back with us,” said Billie, “to show us the way home.”

The place was as still as ever, when they drew up at the front door, but a certain inexplicable change had taken place. They could hardly tell what it was. Perhaps, that the front door was wide open and a big easy chair with a book and a newspaper stood on the gallery. They had not had time to get down, when Virginia herself appeared at the door and welcomed them as joyfully as if the very nicest thing in the world that could happen to her that morning was to see these new friends.

With a little cry of pleasure she ran out to meet them, her fluffy blonde hair blowing about her face like a pale gold halo.

“I am so glad to see you,” she cried. “Won’t you come in? Have you had a nice ride?”

Nice? They exchanged glances.

“Wait until you hear about our ride, Virginia,” said Elinor. “Then you can judge for yourself how nice it was.”

Billie was wondering which of the two Edwards Virginia thought was with them, when the young Southern girl turned to Edward Paxton and said in the most natural manner possible:

“I could almost have taken you for my brother in your chauffeur’s clothes, Mr. Paxton. But not quite.”

They stirred uneasily.

Did Virginia know that her brother had run away? Elinor was wondering; for Elinor had her own views on the subject of Edward’s disappearance.

Billie hardly knew what to think. She had a bewildered feeling that Virginia perhaps knew all about what had happened, until Edward Paxton broke in with:

“Do you know when your brother is coming back, Miss l’Estrange?”

Virginia opened her eyes wide.

“When is your grandmother coming back?” she asked.

Edward shook his head. The young girl was too deep for him.

“Virginia,” said Billie, “we’ve come to take you back with us to luncheon and to stay all night, too, if you will. I hope you can come.”

“If Mamma can spare me, I should love to,” she answered eagerly. “Will you come in while I find out?”

They preferred, however, to wait outside and the young girl flew into the house and upstairs as lightly as a thistledown on the breeze. Presently she was back again.

“I can go,” she cried joyfully. “Mamma is feeling much better to-day and she would like so much to meet you four girls. You don’t mind waiting, do you, Mr. Paxton? I would ask you up, too, but I’m afraid your likeness to my brother might excite her.”

As they followed her into the enormous empty house, she added in a lower voice:

“Remember, Mamma knows nothing about our working, or—or anything. Be careful what you say.”

CHAPTER XVI.—MRS. L’ESTRANGE.

The girls never forgot the picture of Mrs. l’Estrange in her bedroom. It was all so unreal after the empty old house. It was really a sumptuous chamber, large, and full of polished objects. The light came in dimly through the heavy blue brocaded curtains at the windows and was reflected in the mahogany secretaries and tables and the graceful rosewood lounge at one end.

Mrs. l’Estrange was lying in an invalid’s chair drawn up by a table on which stood a bowl of oranges and a glass vase of flowers. She was a small, slender woman, much like Virginia, only more beautiful, with quantities of pale gold hair and sad blue eyes. A ray of light falling across her thin white face gave her a look of one of the early saints, resigned and gentle, sorrowful and happy, all at once.

“I am so happy to meet my little girl’s friends,” she said, stretching out a small transparent hand through which they could see the pink light shining. “She has told me how kind you have been to her.”

“But she was very kind to us, Mrs. l’Estrange,” replied Elinor. “I don’t know what we would have done if she had not taken us in and given us supper one night when our launch was wrecked in the lake.”

“Ah, but that was nothing,” continued the poor, pretty invalid. “Think how many times she has visited you at the hotel.”

“Oh——” began Billie, and broke off quickly, for Virginia, standing back of her mother’s chair, had put her finger to her lips, and the truth now dawned upon the Motor Maids.

The young girl had told a brave falsehood to her mother to explain her frequent absences from home.

“It’s what might be called a ‘noble lie’,” thought Billie, “but how can they keep it up? And now there’s Edward gone off and left it all to Virginia,” her thoughts continued, but she stifled the notion immediately. “It’s impossible. I believe he will come back, I do, no matter how strange it seems.”

“I am so sorry that Edward, my son, has gone away on a trip with some friends,” went on Mrs. l’Estrange. “But he writes he is having such a beautiful time, I don’t begrudge the boy a change. It is very dull for him here. I wish you could help me persuade him to go to college next year. He should go North and see something of the world, but he will not leave Virginia and me, and as you see, I am quite helpless.”

She spread out her pink hands and smiled faintly.

Presently Virginia, seeing that the girls understood, passed into the next room to change her dress.

They were silent after she left, hardly daring to venture a remark until Nancy threw herself into the breach by saying:

“What a beautiful old house this is, Mrs. l’Estrange. It is as big as a hotel. I never saw so many rooms in a private house.”

“I’m glad you like it, dear. It has been in my family for a great many years and it is rather in disrepair now. The furniture is quite old. I have not bought any in my time except the piano. It was all collected by my mother and grandmother and great-grandmother, too. If you have been in my drawing-room, perhaps you noticed the inlaid desk. It was brought over from France nearly two hundred years ago. I value it more than anything in the house, I think. And if you are interested in such things, you must ask Virginia to show you the tea set which was once owned by Lady Hamilton. And many other things, the silver bowl presented to my great-grandmother by General Lafayette, and a beautiful sword which was given to one of my great-great uncles by General Jackson.”

So the invalid chattered away. It was evident that the lost treasures of that house were her greatest joy and hobby, and her children had never had the heart to tell her they were gone, scattered.

“Perhaps you would like to see my collection of miniatures,” went on Mrs. l’Estrange. “They are just inside the cabinet. Won’t you bring them over, and I can explain them myself.”

On a shelf in the highboy they found two large black velvet plaques on which were pinned a dozen beautiful miniatures, some in jeweled frames.

“These are all my family,” she said. “I shall have the children done to add to the collection as soon as I am well enough to go North. There are no good artists in this part of the country. This is my aunt who danced with the Prince of Wales. She is like Virginia, I think, blonde hair and blue eyes and the same sweet expression. This is my uncle who was presented with the sword. He was a brave soldier.”

“Here is some one who looks very much like your son, Mrs. l’Estrange,” put in Billie.

The picture they were looking at was a tinted photograph showing a handsome young man with black hair and clear blue eyes. It resembled Edward except that the mouth and chin were softer and less resolute in outline. The face indeed was more like Edward Paxton’s.

“Oh,” said Virginia’s mother, “I did not know that was on the plaque. That is my husband’s picture.” She laid it on the table nervously and then picked it up again and looked at it sadly. “My poor husband,” she said softly, continuing to gaze at it so long that the girls felt uncomfortable and embarrassed.

“Who is this?” asked Mary, pointing to another old-fashioned photograph.

The invalid smiled as if the sight of this new face brought up pleasant memories, and the young man in the picture smiled back at her, a kindly, merry smile. It was not a tinted picture and they could only tell that he had dark hair and eyes and a strong, rugged face.

“That,” she said sadly, “was an old and—and dear friend—Ignatius Donahue.”

Virginia hurried into the room at this moment and looked a quick warning at the girls. In another instant they would have exclaimed: “Ignatius Donahue? We travelled down in his private car!”

“Good-bye, Mamma, dearest,” Virginia said, taking the plaque and photographs gently but firmly away from her mother and locking them in the cabinet. “Mammy will take good care of you and I shall be back to-morrow morning. If we are to get to the hotel by lunch time, we had better be hurrying on. It’s a quarter to one now. You won’t forget your drops at half-past, will you, dear? And your tonic to-night? See, I’ll put them here to remind you. Good-bye,” and she kissed her mother twice and hurried the girls out of the room quickly.

The old colored woman was waiting in the hall, probably to go on duty, and Billie heard Virginia whisper as she passed:

“She’s been looking at those pictures again, Mammy.”

Only one thing more happened before they left that mysterious house. Billie, who was the last in the line of young girls to file down the staircase, heard a door creak in the hall and looked back. There, standing in the doorway of one of the other rooms stood a tall, well-built man. A long white bandage was wrapped around and around his head. But it did not hide his rugged face, and at that moment, his lips, for some unknown reason, were curled into a kindly, merry smile. Perhaps it was Uncle Peter who provoked the smile, for he appeared just then with Virginia’s battered old suit case, standing very erect and dignified in his old blue cloth swallowtail with its brass buttons, like the fine old-time servant he was.

On the way back to the hotel, they told Virginia the story of their adventures in the woods.

“Do you think it could have been Dick?” they asked, when they reached the mocking bird part of the history.

“Perhaps,” she answered. “He’s been off all morning. But there are lots of other mocking birds, you know.”

Many and varying were the emotions which reflected themselves in Virginia’s face as she heard of the dangers they had been through. She almost shed tears over the attack of the jaguar, as she called it.

“I didn’t know there were any left around here,” she said. “They are the most dangerous, treacherous animals in the world.”

But when she was questioned about the house in the woods, she pressed her lips together into a thin line of determination and was silent for a moment.

“Did you know there was such a house, with a path connecting directly with your place, Virginia?” asked Billie in her usual direct, honest way that was sometimes embarrassing.

“Oh, yes,” answered the girl, “but the person who lived there is—is dead now.”

“Was he a hermit?” demanded Nancy.

“Yes, something like it.”

“How interesting,” put in Elinor. “And did you really know him?”

“I have seen him,” answered Virginia guardedly.

“He must have walked frequently between your house and his,” said Edward, “because the trail looks as if it had been well trod.”

“And the man who killed the panther?” asked Billie. “Who was he, Virginia? I would like to give him something if it could be arranged. He saved our lives.”

“He does not need anything. He would not like a present, I’m sure, for what he did.”

“You know him, then?”

“I believe so. He is a man who has been staying in this neighborhood for some time.”

And not another word could be got out of Virginia. Soft, pretty little creature that she was, it could be seen that she had a will of her own.

They were not late to luncheon and Miss Campbell had not been uneasy, but it seemed strange to them to be sitting around a snowy damask-spread table in a beautiful big dining-room, with softly treading waiters at every hand to do their bidding and music floating to them from the piazza. Was it only that morning that they had been lost in a wilderness with poisonous snakes and wild animals about them; or had the forest after all been enchanted and was it all a dream?

After drinking tea in the Cocoanut Grove and listening to the concert, they strolled until dinner time in the splendid avenue of palms. But there was one more sensation for the Motor Maids before bedtime. Edward sought them in the evening, and calling Billie off from the others, gave her a letter.

“This was in the old cigar box,” he said.

It was addressed to “Ignatius Donahue, Esq.,” and Billie, after consulting with Elinor, added that gentleman’s New York address under the name, stamped it and dropped it in the mail box at the desk.

It was impossible to fathom the mystery which had wound itself about that name, but if a letter had been waiting for him all this time in the wild wood, he certainly ought to have it as soon as possible.

CHAPTER XVII.—A MORNING CALL.

“Of course, my dear,” answered Miss Campbell, busy at the mirror with her headgear, just as the rest of the maids came in.

Elinor tore off the end of the envelope and took out two cards, while the others with young-girl curiosity made haste to look over her shoulder.

On a piece of folded note paper was written:

“Introducing the Marquis di Briganza and Lord Albert Spencer Ormond. Ignatius Donahue.”

The cards were foreign-looking square pieces of pasteboard engraved with the names of these noble gentlemen, one of whom was attached to an Embassy in Washington.

“Now, what in the world?” cried Miss Campbell, and the girls seemed quite awe-struck at these high-sounding titles. “Why should Ignatius Donahue send these titled persons to meet us? We are just plain, simple Americans and I don’t think a Marquis and a Lord would add to our pleasure a bit. Do you, children?”

“No,” answered Billie emphatically.

“I shall be afraid of them, I am certain,” said Mary.

“We shall have to put on our best clothes to meet them, I suppose,” was Nancy’s observation; while Elinor, holding herself very grandly, remarked:

“I am sure, we are quite as good as they.”

“Noble princess,” laughed Billie, “of course you are and so are we all, but don’t you think it’s a nuisance to have to give up our morning ride and change our dresses just to spend half an hour with two silly foreign lords? They’ll probably have little mustaches that are waxed and turned up at the ends, and wear high-heeled shoes and carry rattan canes and——”

“But the boy is waiting,” interrupted Miss Campbell. “Shall I send word we’ll be down presently?”

“Of course,” they answered in a chorus, and Miss Campbell smiled to herself. After all, it was not an every-day occurrence to have a Lord and a Marquis pay a friendly morning call.

“You may tell the gentlemen we will see them on the piazza in ten minutes, boy,” she said, commencing to unpin her veil as she spoke.

They were much longer than ten minutes, however, in making the proper toilets in which to receive their distinguished guests. Miss Campbell put on a lavender silk she usually wore in the afternoon. Nancy insisted on wearing her very best lingerie and a leghorn hat with a wreath of pink roses encircling the crown.

Billie removed a linen suit only slightly wrinkled and replaced it with a fresh one as dazzling white as the snow that caps the Atlas Mountains. Elinor wore a beautiful creamy organdy trimmed with real lace, a gown that she had been saving for Mrs. Duffy’s next party; and little Mary attired herself in the daintiest and prettiest muslin that that clever mother of hers had ever made.

“Shall I wear my hat or not?” asked Miss Campbell, taking a final survey of herself in the cheval glass. “Billie, you have lived in Europe. Is it customary over there to receive visitors at hotels in bonnets in the morning?”

“Dearest Cousin,” laughed Billie, “I never received a visitor in my life that I can remember except some of Papa’s friends, and I never wore a bonnet for them. I suppose people in very high society may do as they please. Papa told me he saw a funny, shabby old English lady once at a hotel who turned out to be a real duchess. But she poured her tea into a saucer and drank it, and when her granddaughter remonstrated Papa heard her say in a deep bass voice: ‘My dear child, don’t you know a Duchess may drink tea from a tin pail if she chooses?’”

“Very good, my dear, we are American princesses and it’s nobody’s business whether we wear hats or not. Now, are you ready? Let me see how all of you look first. Very charming and lovely, my four little rosebuds. I am quite proud of you. Am I all right?”

“Sweet as a peach,” answered Billie.

“Now, children, let me caution all of you not to let two foreign noblemen make you feel ill at ease. They are not a bit better than you are, remember, no matter how many titled generations they may have back of them.”

“I wonder if they live in castles,” said Nancy with a little fluttering laugh that showed the state of her feelings better than words could tell.

Elinor swept along with her proud head held high. Her friends decided that she looked the part of a noble princess to perfection. Mary, with a feeling of timidity, stuck close to Miss Campbell’s side, and Billie, feeling rather bashful herself about confronting these grand strangers, brought up the rear of the procession. Miss Campbell stepped resolutely into the elevator, determined not to be frightened by two paltry titles, and in this wise they approached the hotel piazza, unable to disguise from themselves that they were all feeling slightly shaky in the region of the knee joints.

“Where are the gentlemen who sent up these cards?” Miss Campbell asked a bellboy, as she searched the piazza which was almost empty at this hour.

The boy took the cards and read them slowly. Then he began an itinerary of the piazzas and parlors calling in a loud voice:

“The Marqueese dee Brigander,—Lord Albert Spencer Ormond.”

“Good heavens, how very embarrassing,” exclaimed Miss Campbell. “I didn’t know the child was going to scream the names all over the place.”

It was indeed a conspicuous moment in the lives of these five ladies. People scattered about the piazzas and in the parlors began slowly to collect near the entrance to the lobby. There were faces at every window. Bellboys peeped from the doorways and around corners. But no gentlemen answering to the names of these ancient titles responded. In truth, Miss Campbell and her charges appeared to form a highly interesting group as they sat waiting for the noble strangers to approach.

At last the boy returned.

“They ain’t no such persons registered at this here hotel, ma’am. They may have come over from one of the others. Do you remember the boy as brought you the card?”

“I do,” answered Elinor. “He had a freckled face and a snub nose and I think his name is Joey.”

Joey was produced immediately. It appeared that he had been watching the callers who had sent up the sealed envelope, but he had not known that it was their names being called about the hotel. He had noticed, however, that they had slipped into the garden with some rapidity and no doubt they were there now, although he, Joey, had distrusted them from the first.

“But why, Joey?” asked Miss Campbell with some concern. “I’m sure they came very properly introduced by our great, although still unseen friend, Mr. Ignatius Donahue.”

Joey could give no better reason for mistrusting the strangers than that they seemed sly.

“I am afraid you are a person of exceedingly poor judgment then, Joey,” answered Miss Campbell with great dignity. “We shall see the gentlemen in the garden. It is less conspicuous than here. Go before and announce us.”

Following the little page, who resembled an imp in bottle green, they went forth into the garden, where in the distance they beheld two figures in white flannels seated on a rustic seat under a poinciana tree.

“They are,” whispered Nancy in an excited voice. “The blonde one is the English lord, I suppose, and the dark one is the marquis.”

“It may be just the other way around,” replied Billie. “Things always turn out contrariwise when you arrange them yourself beforehand.”

“I’m sure the blonde one is English,” repeated Nancy with conviction, “and from the back of his head, I should say he was quite handsome.”

While they were whispering together as they followed slowly after Miss Campbell, they were amazed to behold Timothy Peppercorn running at full speed down another walk which branched off toward the hotel. In his haste he leaped over a low stone bench and landed right beside the two strangers.

“If this isn’t jolly,” they heard him cry, slapping the blonde lord on the back. “By Jove, but I’m glad to see you. How are you, old man?”

Suddenly Miss Campbell pressed her lips together. Two red spots appeared on either cheek, and she hurried as fast as her diminutive feet could carry her toward the group of young men.

“Percival Algernon St. Clair,” she cried, shaking the blonde lord by the shoulders. “Charlie Clay! You young rascals, how dare you play a practical joke on an unprotected old lady and four helpless children? I would just like to box your jaws well, the both of you two upstarts! Marquis and Lord, indeed! Think of our having wasted the morning dressing up in our best clothes like this! You are a precious pair, but I’m glad to see you,” she added, beginning already to relent.

Her occasional mild bursts of anger were like brief summer tempests, done almost before they had begun.

“We are so ashamed, Miss Campbell,” answered Percy. “We thought it would be a bully good joke on you and the girls, but we had no idea they were going to shout those names all over the hotel. I got the cards from my senator-uncle in Washington, and we used Mr. Donahue’s name for fun. But when they began to yell those titles we had to run. We couldn’t face it.”

“Well, well,” said Miss Campbell, “I will forgive you this time, but never play another practical joke on me. You’ve no idea what a sensation your names created in the hotel.”

There was no bad feeling on the part of the Motor Maids. They were too glad to see their friends from West Haven to mind having been fooled.

“I recognized you as soon as I saw your back, Percy-Algy,” said Nancy. “Only I couldn’t think who on earth you were.”

“Do you call that recognizing, Miss Nancy-Bell?” laughed her friend, his handsome ruddy face flushing deeper with the pleasure of seeing her again.

“But how did you happen to come?” inquired Billie.

“It was Timothy, here, who got us down,” answered Percy. “You see we were great chums one summer in the mountains. I didn’t know how much I wanted to see him again until I found he was at Palm Beach, and the Midget and I decided we’d run down and look him over.”

“So you didn’t come to see us at all, then?” inquired Miss Campbell.

Timothy winked slyly and grinned.

“I guess I’m a pretty good excuse, Miss Campbell,” he said. “But don’t tease the lad. He blushes too easily.”

“And Charlie came to see you, too, I suppose?” pursued Miss Campbell, glancing at the other boy who was at that moment engaged in an earnest and interested conversation with Mary Price.

“Let’s go back and get into our every-days and take a ride in the Comet,” suggested Billie. “We can all squeeze in just as we used to do.”

As the notion seemed agreeable, they parted company for a time, while the ladies fled by a side door into the hotel. And you may be sure they were not as long in “dressing down” for old friends as they were in dressing up for foreign lords. It was not many minutes before they crowded into the red motor which Edward Paxton had brought around from the garage.

“Why, hello,” exclaimed Percy, noticing the young chauffeur at once. “I’m awfully glad to see you again, but I thought you were gone to New York. You must have changed your mind in a hurry to have beat us down.”

“You have made a mistake,” said Edward stiffly. “I never saw you before.”

“Curious,” said Percy, “but you are enough like a fellow we met on the way down to be his twin brother.”

“Was he alone?” demanded Billie.

“He seemed to be, but why?”

“Oh, nothing,” she replied, jumping into the car with the others.

As the automobile turned down the driveway, it met another approaching. The occupants in it bowed politely to Miss Campbell and her party. They were old Mrs. Paxton-Steele, her granddaughter, Georgiana, and her grandson, Clarence. Edward l’Estrange was not with them.