The Secret MarkAn Adventure Story for Girls
still got it. It's the child's lunch basket. There's something in it." "There's our car," said Florence in a relieved tone. The next moment they were rattling homeward. "We solved no mystery tonight," murmured Lucile sleepily. "Added one more to the rest," smiled Florence. "But now I am interested. We must see it through." "Did you hear what the child said, that she'd rather die than steal?" "Wonder what she calls the taking of our Shakespeare?" "That's part of our problem. Continued in our next," smiled Lucile. She set the dilapidated papier-mache lunch box which she had picked up in the street after the child had dropped it, in the corner beneath the cloak rack. Before she fell asleep she thought of it and wondered what had been thumping round inside of it. "Probably just an old, dried-up sandwich," she told herself. "Anyway, I'm too weary to get up and look now. I'll look in the morning." One other thought entered her consciousness before she fell asleep. Or was it a thought? Perhaps just one or two mental pictures. The buildings, the street, the electric signs that had encountered her gaze as they first saw the child and the half-drunk woman passed before her mind's eye. Then, almost instantly, the picture of the street on which the building in which Frank Morrow's bookshop was located flashed before her. "That's queer!" she murmured. "I do believe they were the same!" "And indeed," she thought dreamily, "why should they not be? They are both down in the heart of the city and I am forever losing my sense of location down there." At that she fell asleep.

CHAPTER VI "ONE CAN NEVER TELL"

When Lucile awoke in the morning she remembered the occurrence of the night before as some sort of bad dream. It seemed inconceivable that she and Florence, a couple of co-eds, should have thrown themselves upon a rough-looking woman in the heart of the city on a street with which they were totally unfamiliar. Had they done this to free a child about whom they knew nothing save that she had stolen two valuable books? "Did we?" she asked sleepily. "Did we what?" smiled Florence, drawing the comb through her hair. "Did we rescue that child from that woman?" "I guess we did." "Why did we do it?" "That's what I've been wondering." Lucile sat up in bed and thought for a moment. She gazed out of the window at the lovely green and the magnificent Gothic architecture spread out before her. She thought of the wretched alleys and tumble-down tenements which would greet the eye of that mysterious child when she awoke. "Anyway," she told herself, "we saved her from something even worse, I do believe. We sent her back to her little old tottering man. I do think she loves him, though who 
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