The Girl Scouts at Bellaire Part 26

which Mary still appeared blind to.

Mrs. Dunbar was very busy arranging for the removal of Reda, but in a moment of cessation she was heard talking to Crow's Nest over the phone. She gave orders to the sanitarium that Professor Benson should be brought down to Cragsnook for a ride late that afternoon, as the girls would not go up there that day. Besides, Mrs. Dunbar was declaring, the ride would do him good.

"Oh, won't that be lovely!" and Mary almost danced out of her glumps.

"Just think of Grandie here!"

"Now, Mary-love, you promised some of Reda's news. Do tell us before something else happens to put off all our delicious mysteries,"

implored Madaline, quite as if the telling would give the same joy to Mary as the news would furnish to herself.

"What did she want to warn you of?" prompted Grace.

"Oh, Janos and his men. They were coming out here to take all Grandie's orchids away. And they brought the monkey to scare him. He was dreadfully frightened of a monkey once in the tropics, and Janos knew it, so he just planned that awful trick on him----"

"With our lovely little Boxer! How perfectly absurd," exclaimed Grace, at the risk of spoiling all the thrilling story Mary had undertaken to tell them.

"Yes," went on Mary, "and the night you girls came, that first night, you remember?"

"Yes, when I turned on the lights," inserted Madaline.

"That was the night they first planned to scare Grandie's secret from him. They were all three out in that orchid room, just waiting to break in and--oh, I can't say what they were going to do to get Grandie's secret from him." She was now on the verge of sobbing, and the girls had no idea of letting any such thing occur.

"But Madaline turned the tables," Cleo said cheerily, "and she shooed off the--desperate thieves!" and Cleo again reverted to type as a fiction fixer.

"And the really cruel part of it all was," continued Mary, "Grandie did not know and does not know yet what became of the treasure they are all seeking. He lost it with his memory," she said almost in a whisper.

"And it was daddy's just as I was his. I was to be given mother's family with the treasure as a peace offering."

"What was it?" asked Cleo. "Can you tell us now, Mary-love?" she asked gently.

"Yes, Grandie said I might tell you now, for he does not fear things as he did before he went to the sanitarium. He has recovered courage, which was simply clogged up in his congested mind. Yes, he said I might tell you now that he lost the most famous orchid in the world, the 'Spiranthes Corale.' That means coral lady tresses. It was in search of that daddy and the expedition went out. Daddy found it. It was almost beyond price. Then Loved One died, dear daddy was stricken, and all the papers and this wonderful bulb were given Grandie. He lost them! Do you wonder he almost went crazy?"

For a few minutes the girls did not speak. It seemed rather disappointing that the whole mystery should center around the bulb of an orchid.

"Oh, I know," exclaimed Cleo presently. "I have read of the famous orchid hunts and the fabulous sums of money offered for the most rare species. Of course that was the sort of expedition your folks were on, Mary-love. And, of course--why, girls, that's just what our newspaper clipping was all about. The one we found wrapped around the old stick in Mary's big clock!"

"Get it! Get it!" cried Madaline, who literally tumbled after Grace, in haste to reach the old bit of newspaper that had been carefully stored away in the scouts' desk, for they had been a.s.signed one general and especial desk in Cragsnook.

"And the precious bulb was never found?" Cleo said to Mary, seeming to embrace her with a look, so filled was her expression with genuine affection.

"No, it has gone, and with it the one hope of Loved One's last word to me, that the famous orchid which was to be given to her mother in this country would unite me with her family, and prove daddy a real explorer."

"And don't you know who her family are?" asked Cleo, unable to suppress her increasing excitement.

"Not exactly, for Grandie begged me not to ask until he had recovered the bulb. He always felt his memory must come back. Now, of course, it is months, and we have given up hope. But I don't care any more, for I have found so many other darling loves in life." She threw her arms around Cleo, and if the latter had ever given in to tears she might have been pardoned a few just then--the kind that come with too much joy.

"Mary!" she said gently, "now I know why Professor Benson once called you the orphan of the orchids, but suppose, suppose your daddy didn't die?" she ventured.

"I have often thought of that," said the child. "But even if he lived he could never find me, for he would think I died with so many others, and I suppose I could not even look for him, until I grow up like Loved One, and go off again to search among the orchids. I wouldn't fear that fever when the goal might mean daddy!"

CHAPTER XXIII

MAID MARY AWAKE

"We had better tell her," said Mrs. Dunbar to Cleo, an hour later, after Cleo had talked things over with G-race, while she left Madaline to entertain Mary. "As you say, my dear, it does look as if your vacation story is going to have a very happy ending."

Cleo flitted back to her companions. They divined from her manner that the hoped-for good news was to be "thrown on the screen."

"Mary," began Cleo, who had dropped in a safe coil on the rug at Mary's feet, "are you prepared for the very biggest thing in all the world to happen? Can you stand the most astonis.h.i.+ng kind of news?" and she managed to secure Mary's hand to give her confidence.

"Oh, yes, Cleo dear, but don't tell me if you are not sure? I have been dreaming such glorious things since--you talked of--daddy!"

"It is just about him, Mary, I want to speak. He may be alive----"

"Oh, how do you know? Who has found him----"

"Don't become too excited now," pleaded Cleo, while Grace and Madaline both closed in affectionately about Mary's chair. "Of course we cannot be too positive, but Uncle Guy has wired he is bringing back--your daddy!"

"Oh!" the sound was a sigh, a gasp, then Mary began to slip down deep into the chair.

"Now, don't you dare faint!" called Madaline, with the magic way she always exercised of averting evil through sheer innocent challenge.

"Here, Grace, hold her head while I fetch water," and while Grace attempted to support the head Madaline had been fondling, Mary raised it with a look of unspeakable joy.

"Oh, girls!" she murmured, "how did you do it?"

"Oh, we didn't," disclaimed Cleo. "No girls really could; we just lived up to our laws and rules and inspirations, and all those powers united to bring our happy result. It would be perfectly silly to say girls could do such things."

"But we did all the same," came from Grace, "and it would be sillier to say the rules and the laws and the inspirations did them. Wouldn't it?

You wrote the whole story and even sent Mary's picture to your uncle."

"But daddy!" Mary begged. "Tell me, where is he now? How did your uncle find him?"

"Our uncle," corrected Cleo. "I am almost afraid to tell you this part. The girls will say I was in the secret all the time, and I wasn't, truly. Mary--you are my cousin!"

"She is not--no fair!" cried Grace, actually slamming a pillow on Cleo's head. "I warned you long ago not to dare to claim her----" And the thumping of soft pillows supplied the omission of words.

"At least let me tell it," said Madaline in mock scorn. "Be generous enough to give us that much glory. You see, ladies and gentlemen (to an imagined audience), this little girl," slamming Cleo with another pillow, "wrote a letter to her cousin. Her cousin had found his cousin, and his cousin made Mary Cleo's cousin, because Cleo's cousin--was----"

Realizing Mary was not in a mood for such joking, Madaline apologized with a kiss on the softly pinked cheek. "Mary-love," she confessed, "I just did that to ward off tears. Cleo would have disgraced the scouts in another moment."

"We got the most important clew in the old bamboo cane," said Cleo, seriously. "That was literally stuffed with papers, and one was a baptismal certificate, giving your name, Mary, as Marie Hastings Dunbar."

"Dunbar!" repeated Mary, "and the men all called daddy Dunnie. That was his name, Dunbar!"

"Yea, and Aunt Audrey has found out that Constance Hastings, your mother's mother, is in one of the finest hotels in New York now! The Hastings own the most famous orchid collection in this country."

"They are millionaires," began Mary, but her voice was almost scornful.