The Girl Scouts at Bellaire Part 27

"Yes, I know. Aunt Audrey has talked with Mrs. Gilmore Hastings over the telephone. She will be apt to take you from us, if you don't hold tight."

"Never! Never! Never!" defied Grace. "She is our Mary--yes, cousin Mary, for isn't Cleo's Aunt Audrey our Aunt Audrey--by vacation scout laws?"

Only the girls that they were could have absorbed so many surprises at a sitting, but such is the nature of nature's best product, and that product is always lively, happy girls!

What happened between that time and next morning would take volumes to relate, but it might as well be admitted that Jennie had to fairly camp out in the hall that night to stop the talking, and it was away past midnight when she succeeded. Even then it would be false to claim that Mary actually slept.

Early in the evening Mrs. Dunbar had very carefully unfolded the story to Professor Benson when he came down over the mountain in the car Mrs.

Dunbar had ordered. So that he, too, was somewhat prepared for the astounding surprise. The return of Jayson Dunbar from the mystery of orchid land seemed almost too wonderful, but the Professor admitted he had always hoped Jay would "turn up."

"And every letter I wrote to mother I kept hinting that the glories of Bellaire were actually taking root in my soul," said Cleo, as the girl dressed next morning, almost unconscious of the task they were performing. "Now she will understand the metaphor."

"And Michael is going to give us all a ride up to the studio before breakfast," exclaimed Madaline. "He wants to try the car to make sure it is all right."

"Try it on us," laughed Grace. Nevertheless she was the first one to find the best seat, when the car directly honked at the door.

Reda was beautifully installed in her own room, and pompously accepting the ministrations of Katie Bergen, when the girls found her at the studio. How delightful it all was! Mary was speechless with sheer joy.

"It is perfectly glorious!" she kept exclaiming. "And to think that daddy is coming! How can I believe it after all my dark days!"

"Girls! Let's have one more blissful look in the orchid room!" begged Grace. "It won't be the same when others come."

Almost like a little procession they wended their way into the conservatory. At the opening of the door they were almost overcome with the perfume of the tropics that burst from the riot of glory there.

They looked from one bloom to another. Mary told them how Professor Benson had made every sort of bulb bloom in the hope of finding the lost treasure, the rarest orchid in the world. Then she explained why she and Reda had gathered queer roots from which the botanist had ground fertilizer, but that all of this had not brought forth the priceless bloom.

They were reluctantly leaving when Madaline and Grace espied Mary's old home-made doll. It was so quaint and queer they both sought to reclaim it at once.

"Just look!" said Madaline. "What a funny old doll!"

"Isn't it jolly," added Grace, whose hand was on the discarded toy just as Madaline picked it up.

"Why, the orchids have taken root in it, Mary," declared Grace. "See, this sprout growing out of the arm!"

"Let me see!" almost cried Mary. "Oh, girls, it is it! It is the lost orchid. Grandie had sewed it up in the doll! Look. See that stem!"

She was shouting almost wildly, for there, shooting from the broken arm pit of the queer old hand-made doll was the unmistakable tendril of the long sought for orchid.

"And we both found it at exactly the same minute!" announced Grace when the full value of their discovery dawned upon them. "Cleo found an adorable cousin, and you and I, Madie dear, found the lost orchid!"

Mary held the doll up to the astonished gaze of her companions. To think that tiny green shoot should mean so much! That hidden in the queer doll was a prize, almost beyond price, and for this prize covetous men had followed Mary and her guardian from the tropics!

The girls stood there almost reverently.

And, unconsciously, Mary posed again as the Orphan of the Orchids!

Michael had been off to Crow's Nest for the professor and he was now back with the splendidly improved man, a scholar and a scientist every inch, who stood there in sight of his orchid room.

"Grandie! Grandie!" called Mary, "see, we have found it. You sewed it up in the doll you made me! Don't you remember how you told me never to part with that old rag baby?"

Like a flash it all came back! Yes, when the fever threatened his life he had decided the child could keep her doll free from suspicion, and in this he had sewed the precious orchid bulb.

"Girls! Girls!" he exclaimed, "am I dreaming? And I didn't betray my trust! Dunnie, you may come back to us now; I have saved for you both your darling child and your precious orchid!"

Meanwhile the greatest of great preparations were being completed at Cragsnook. Only the freest use of telegraph had contented Guy Dunbar to stay with the train that bore him and his famous cousin back to civilization.

The train was in. Michael and Shep met it. Boxer had been compelled to stay home though Michael wanted to take him, and all the girls "with Mrs. Dunbar and Professor Benson stood on the porch, under the arch of growing roses that welcomed the comers to Cragsnook.

"Don't get too excited, Mary," begged Madaline, always to be depended upon for breaking too heavy a silence.

"There they come," shouted Cleo, and nothing but a firm hold laid on her very skirts by Mrs. Dunbar kept the impetuous little scout from running out too near the approaching motor.

Folded in her daddy's arms, Mary seemed for a moment miles and miles away. Then she turned to the girls and tried to speak, but she only managed to say:

"Girls, I am wide awake at last."

"Say, Audrey," said Guy Dunbar, after he had embraced his wife and looked about him at the group of girls, "this surely is a real old home week. I always knew you ought to run a boarding school!"

"Or a merry-go-round, Uncle Guy," Cleo supplemented. "This house, with Aunt Audrey as leader, has been a regular picnic grounds all Summer."

"And to think I should literally fall over old coz, Jay Dunbar, in a western lumber camp," said jolly Guy Dunbar, thumping his own brilliant head.

Mary and her father (he did look like Guy Dunbar) were too spellbound to notice their surroundings. But as quickly as he could manage it Professor Benson spoke to the wanderer. "It's like the real page in our old log, Dunnie," said the professor, "and your precious Spiranthes Corale has been found. I lost it, but Mary's, friends have recovered it and now you are the famous explorer you set out to become." And he held up the quaint doll with the miraculous green shoot stealing through its arm pit.

"Some little Girl Scouts!" declared Guy Dunbar, leading the way to the house.

"How shall we end it?" asked Cleo. "Mary's daddy is found, the orchid is found, new cousins are found--oh, girls! I have so many wonderful endings for our vacation story we shall have to vote on the fade-out!"

she decided, while the girls fell into line for a Scout parade to victory.

And the joys of that wonderful reunion must occupy our own interest in these self-same little girls until we meet them again in the next volume, to be ent.i.tled, THE GIRL SCOUTS AT SEA CREST--OR THE WIG WAG RESCUE.