way; but she
sat between Ruth and Helen and they said little to her during the ride.

She had been wrapped in a thick blanket at the station and was not likely
to take cold; but Miss Kate and old Mammy Laura bustled about a good
deal when Nita was brought into the bungalow; and very shortly she was
tucked into one of the beds on the second floor--in the very room in
which Ruth and Helen and Mercy were to sleep--and Miss Kate had insisted
upon her swallowing a bowl of hot tea.

Nita seemed to be a very self-controlled girl. She didn't weep, now
that the excitement was past, as most girls would have done. But at first
she was very silent, and watched her entertainers with snapping black
eyes and--Ruth thought--in rather a sly, sharp way. She seemed to be
studying each and every one of the girls--and Miss Kate and Mammy Laura
as well.

The boys came home after a time and announced that every soul aboard
the _Whipstitch_ was safe and sound in the life saving station. And the
captain's wife had sent over word that she and her husband would go back
to Portland the next afternoon. If the girl they had picked up there
on the dock wished to return, she must be ready to go with them.

"What, go back to that town?" cried the castaway when Ruth told her
this, sitting right up in bed. "Why, that's the _last_ place!"

"Then you don't belong in Portland?" asked Ruth.

"I should hope not!"

"Nor in Maine?" asked Madge, for the other girls were grouped about
the room. They were all anxious to hear the castaway's story.

The girl was silent for a moment, her lips very tightly pressed together.
Finally she said, with her sly look:

"I guess I ain't obliged to tell you that; am I?"

"Witness does not wish to incriminate herself," snapped Mercy, her eyes
dancing.

"Well, I don't know that I'm bound to tell you girls everything I
know," said the strange girl, coolly.

"Right-oh!" cried Heavy, cordially. "You're visiting me. I don't
know as it is anybody's business how you came to go aboard the
_Whipstitch_----"

"Oh, I don't mind telling you that," said the girl, eagerly. "I was
hungry."

"Hungry!" chorused her listeners, and Heavy said: "Fancy being hungry,
and having to go aboard a ship to get a meal!"

"That was it exactly," said Nita, bluntly. "But Mrs. Kirby was real
good to me. And the schooner was going to New York and that's where I
wanted to go."

"Because your folks live there?" shot in The Fox.

"No, they do