the object that had brought her here.

"The children?" she asked, her voice trembling with emotion. "Are they
here?"

"They are at my house, Miss Arbuckle," said Connie, recovering from her
bewilderment enough to realize that she was the hostess. "I suppose
you're crazy to see them."

"Oh yes! Oh yes!" cried the teacher. Then, as Connie led the way on
toward the cottage, she turned to Billie eagerly.

"Billie," she said, "are you sure you recognized my children? If I should
be disappointed now I--I think it would kill me. Tell me, what do they
look like?"

As Billie described the waifs Miss Arbuckle's face grew brighter and
brighter and the man whom the girls had called Hugo Billings leaned
forward eagerly.

"I guess there's no mistake this time, Mary," he said, and there was
infinite relief in his tone.

When they reached the cottage the children were playing in the sand as
usual, and the girls drew back, leaving Miss Arbuckle and her brother to
go on alone.

Miss Arbuckle had grown very white, and she reached out a hand to her
brother for support. Then she leaned forward and called very softly:
"Davy, Davy, dear."

The children stopped playing and stared up at the visitors. But it was
the little fellow who recognized them first.

"Mary! My Mary!" he cried in his baby voice, and ran as fast as his
little legs could carry him straight into Miss Arbuckle's arms. Then the
little girls ran to her, and Miss Arbuckle dropped down in the sand and
hugged them and kissed them and cried over them.

"Oh, my children! My darling, darling children!" she cried over and over
again, while the man stood looking down at them with such a look of utter
happiness on his face that the girls turned away.

"Come on," whispered Billie, and they slipped past the two and into the
house.

Connie's mother and father were in the library, and when the girls told
them what had happened they hurried out to greet the newcomers, leaving
the chums alone.

"Well, now," said Laura, sinking down on the couch and looking up at
them, "what do you think of that?"

"I'm so dazed, I don't know what to think of it," said Billie, adding,
with a funny little laugh: "The only thing we do know is that everybody's
happy."

"Talk about mysteries----" Connie was beginning when Connie's mother and
Miss Arbuckle came in with the clamoring, excited children. And to say
that Miss Arbuckle's face was radiant would not have been describing it
at all.