The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp Part 31

"Now, Alberdina," said the doctor as a last caution, "you understand that you are not to speak unless the gentleman inside asks you a question in German. Answer him in three words if you can. Then come out quietly. If he calls, you may go back."

Alberdina laid aside her comedy hat and followed the doctor into the sick room. The others gathered noiselessly outside the window and listened. There was a long silence. Then the man on the bed spoke in a low, weak voice. It was only a mumble of sounds to Billie and Richard, but Mr. Campbell understood German and listened intently.

Alberdina replied not in three words but in a long voluble speech.

They held their breath.

"Come out," called the doctor softly.

The sick man had begun to speak again. He seemed to be giving orders.

At the door Phoebe was weeping softly. Her father, restored to himself, was a stranger who spoke in a foreign tongue. Billie was fairly shaking with excitement.

"Do you suppose he's forgotten English?" she whispered to Richard, who made the most absurd reply that had nothing whatever to do with Phoebe's father and lost memories.

"I think the doctor had better take you in hand," said Billie.

"I have an incurable disease," answered the young man, not in the least ashamed.

Mr. Campbell had joined the doctor and Alberdina at the other end of the house where their voices could not be heard in the sick room. The young surgeons were also in the group. When Billie and Richard came up, the German girl was saying:

"I cannot from the German English mag. He is a German already yet?"

"Of course," answered the doctor impatiently, "but what did he ask you?"

Alberdina broke into German.

"No, no. In English."

"He very sig yet ees----"

The doctor gave poor Alberdina a withering glance.

"I think I can tell you most of the conversation, Doctor," put in Mr.

Campbell. "The patient asked Alberdina if she were one of the maids at the palace. She answered at great length that she was laundress at Sunrise Camp. 'This was not a palace,' she explained, 'but a hut.'

"'I have been in an accident?'" the sick man asked, as Mr. Campbell translated it.

"When Alberdina acquiesced, he told her to call Franz or Karl.

"Seeing her shake her head, he said:

"'The Baron von Metz is here?'

"'No,' answered Alberdina.

"'None of the household?'"

Then he gave her orders to telegraph the Baron von Metz at an address in Dresden and sign it A. J. Mr. Campbell had failed to catch the telegram, although he distinctly heard the second telegram to a "Miss Phoebe Jones," at an address in England. It said she was not to worry. He had been detained by illness. Twice he made the blundering maid repeat the telegram, and finally exhausted with the mental effort, dropped into unconsciousness.

Was it not strange and terrible to take up the thread of one's life where it had been so ruthlessly snapped off some two decades ago?

Richard and Billie, seated on a rock out of hearing distance of the cabin, discussed the anomaly together.

"It's like Rip Van Winkle," Billie observed, "only worse because there have been so many inventions."

"Yes, there are motor cars, for instance. They were only on trial then; and flying machines."

"And hobble skirts," added Billie with an inward laugh, remembering Nancy's.

"It's very interesting," said Richard, "a good deal like missing the middle act of a drama."

"Don't you imagine that Phoebe's father belonged to a n.o.ble family?

Perhaps he was a younger son, and fell in love with a pretty English girl named Phoebe Jones. They eloped to America and hid themselves in the mountains, and the old Archduke or Prince or Baron who was the father perhaps gave it out that his son was insane. They always do that, you know."

"Very romantic," said Richard, "but why has he been speaking only English all these years?"

"Don't ask me anything so scientific, please."

"It would go hard with me," pursued Richard, "if I got a blow on the head over my English-language b.u.mp, because I wouldn't have any other to take its place."

Having arranged the history of the sick man to their own satisfaction, and as a matter of fact, to the doctor's and Mr. Campbell's also, they returned to Sunrise Camp, leaving Alberdina and Phoebe behind them.

Poor Phoebe had watched Billie and Richard together from the doorstep of the cabin. Then she had folded her hands with a gesture of resignation and closed her eyes. Something had hurt her. She still felt the pain and not all her faith nor prayers could ease it.

That night the campers gathered around the fire and discussed the mystery of the "Prince in Exile," as they had named Phoebe's father.

They told stories of similar cases, of men with double ident.i.ties who had been lost for years, of men who had made new lives for themselves and even earned fortunes.

"I knew he was a prince the first time I saw him," Mary exclaimed.

"And now Phoebe will be a princess and perhaps very rich," observed Elinor.

"Think of stepping from a cabin to a palace," went on Amy Swinnerton.

"From being a barefooted girl selling blackberries on the mountain to being a n.o.ble lady with a retinue of servants."

And so they all talked and discussed and enjoyed themselves immensely until a motor horn interrupted them. A car had evidently stopped in front and someone now hurried over to the group around the fire.

"Well, children," called Dr. Hume, "I daresay you'll be interested in the news I am bringing you."

"Wasn't I right?" cried Billie.

"He was a prince?"

"Or a duke, perhaps?"

"Even a baron is pretty good."

There was a long pause.