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!"

CHAPTER XXV

THE MYSTERY SOLVED

For a moment there was silence in the two rooms while the girls let this
sink in. Then Laura and Vi jumped out of bed, and, running into Connie's
room, fairly pounce