her house, and I am a guest, it seems to me," and it was hoped by every
little girl present that the delicious compliment floated out to
Jennie, who was busy in the breakfast room just at that moment.

"Please let _me_ tell you something first," begged Cleo, when the girls
were left to themselves. "I am fairly bursting with the news. You
know I wrote out the whole story to Uncle Guy. I wanted him to know
all about it when he came home and also, ahem"--and the perky little
head perked perceptibly--"I may as well admit, girls, I am ambitious to
keep the family honors up in the writing line, so I just wrote all this
glorious vacation to Uncle Guy, making it just like a summer story. I
sent our pictures----"

"Mercy me, Cleo!" interrupted Grace, "I guess you will be a story
writer. Just see how you have us all keyed up, and won't tell us what
happened. What did your Uncle Guy say?" she demanded.

Cleo laughed triumphantly. "There, I knew I would get you excited----"

"Cleo Harris!" shouted Madaline, almost forgetting the presence of a
sick person out on the enclosed side porch, where Reda was being fixed
up for her journey over the mountain. "Cleo," repeated Madaline, "you
tell us instantly what your Uncle Guy said!"

"Your commands are my pleasures," replied Cleo in mock dramatic
emphasis. "There, doesn't that sound like a book? Uncle Guy wrote to
me and to Aunt Audrey, and he merely said not to let a single kid
escape. That my letter had knocked him silly, and that his cousin,
whom he discovered out in the western camp, was coming home with him."

"Who is the cousin?" asked Grace.

"A man, a lovely man, just like Uncle Guy. He was an explorer, or
still is, and has been away for some years," she glanced rather
anxiously at Mary, but the latter never changed her serious expression.
Then Cleo said pointedly, "Mary, your father was an explorer, wasn't
he?"

"Yes, he went away in search of orchids," faltered Mary, "and you know
he never came back from the sea, when the men took him out to the ocean
to cool him in that frightful fever."

"And you left the island with the professor a few days after?" pressed
Cleo.

"Yes, oh yes. We had to get away. Grandie was getting sick, you know;
that is how he lost--his memory."

"Yes," said Cleo, simply, but Grace and Madaline had "seen a light,"
which Mary still appeared blind to.

Mrs. Dunbar was very busy arranging for the removal of Reda, but in a
moment of