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