the hotel, looked about the lobby, and then went up to their rooms. Carlitos was nowhere to be seen.

"I declare, I'm getting more and more worried--and thoroughly exasperated," Miss Prudence announced after looking in the last room.

"Wait here, Miss Prudence, and I'll run down to the lobby and ask the clerks at the desk if they've seen him," Jo Ann said hurriedly. "He might've left some message there."

"Well--I'll finish my packing while I'm waiting."

"I'll go with you, Jo," offered Florence and Peggy together.

On inquiring at the desk Jo Ann found that neither of the clerks had seen him.

As she was starting to turn away, one of the clerks summoned the porter who stood at the front entrance and asked him if he had seen Carlitos. To the girls' delight the porter nodded and replied that he thought he had seen him talking to a newsboy about half an hour ago.

The girls' faces brightened on hearing this, Jo Ann's especially, as she immediately recalled how fascinated Carlitos had been with a Mexican newsboy the first day they had arrived. After a quick "Muchas gracias" to the porter, the girls hurried out to the street, Jo Ann in the lead.

When they had walked only a short distance down the street, Jo Ann heard a newsboy's shrill cry in broken English. "Carlitos's voice!" she exclaimed. "I hear him!"She rushed around the corner and stared across the street. There, a bag of newspapers slung across his shoulder, stood Carlitos selling a paper to an American.

"Can you beat that!" Peggy ejaculated, catching sight of Carlitos at the same time.

"Of all things!" Florence gasped.

They hastened across the street to his side. He greeted them half joyfully, half sheepishly; then, with a gesture to the grinning little Mexican newsboy beside him, he said, "I sell lots of papers for Diego. He say I very good 'cause I can speak de Spanish and de English."

"You may be good at selling papers, Carlitos," Jo Ann answered, "but you should've told your aunt Prudence where you were going. She's been worried stiff about you."

"Worried stiff--stiff," he repeated, puzzled.

"Badly worried--_mucho_. She's been afraid something terrible had 

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