After a long pause, Billie saw, creeping along one of the lines of rope, swaying and swinging almost to sea level, an object which appeared to be shaped like a pair of clumsy trouser legs with the head and shoulders of a human being above.
“It’s a woman,” cried Nancy, jumping up and down in her excitement, as she looked through the glasses. “It’s—it’s——”
“It’s Mme. Alta,” exclaimed Billie, as the woman was lifted onto the beach.
No one could explain why the music teacher should be found on a wrecked schooner, but Mr. Bangs and Billie exchanged meaning glances as Mme. Alta was supported into the Life-Saving Station.
The next time the buoy was drawn into shore it carried Fannie Alta, a shivering, wretched little figure, who followed her mother silently into the life-savers’ house.
“Who can the third one be?” said Billie out loud, although she was speaking to herself. “Can it be——”
She jumped out of the car and ran down the path to the beach, followed by her three chums. As she passed Mr. Bangs, he caught her by the arm and said in her ear:
No one but Billie and Mr. Bangs recognized Belle Rogers in the miserable object which now crawled out of the breeches buoy. Her face was blue and pinched with cold. Her damp hair hung in her eyes, and she moaned and sobbed most pitifully.
When she saw Billie, she flung her wet arms around the young girl’s neck.
“I do forgive you,” she whispered, “and if you would rather not go into the station, we will take you home in ‘The Comet.’”
“Any place but home,” sobbed Belle, as Ben threw his ulster around her shivering shoulders and Nancy wrapped a scarf about her head.
The others had now recognized the poor girl, and with a generous impulse they tried to shield her from the gaze of the villagers.
“Will you go to Cousin Helen’s, then?” asked Belle, as they half carried her up the steep path.
“Yes,” she answered, and in another ten minutes the miserable refugee was being tenderly ministered to at Billie’s home by three of the most detested members of the Blue Bird Society.
Belle, looking still very unlike herself, lay in Billie’s little brass bed, propped up on pillows.
“How can you and Miss Campbell be so kind to me,” she was saying, “when you know how wicked I have been?”