that were dead and gone and pictures that you couldn’t replace?”

   “Oh, well—I suppose that would be different. Did she say anything about the people?”

   “She didn’t go into details, but she said they were pictures she prized above anything.”

   “Oh, perhaps then that would make a difference.”

   “I hope she gets the album back,” said Billie seriously.

   Then Laura promptly forgot all about both Miss Arbuckle and the album.

   A little while later the girls swung joyfully out upon the road, bound for town and shopping and perhaps some ice cream and—oh, just a jolly good time of the kind girls know so well how to have, especially in the spring of the year.

   “I’m sorry Connie couldn’t come along,” said Laura, drinking in deep breaths of the fragrant air.

   “Yes,” said Billie, her eyes twinkling. “She said she wished she hadn’t been born with a conscience.”

   “A conscience,” said Vi innocently. “Why?”

   “Because,” said Billie, her cheeks aglow with the heat and exercise, her brown hair clinging in little damp ringlets to her forehead, and her eyes bright with health and the love of life, “then she could have had a good time to-day instead of staying at home in a stuffy room and writing a cartload of letters. She says if she doesn’t write them, she’ll never dare face her friends when she gets home.”

   “She’s a darling,” said Laura, executing a little skip in the road that sent the dust flying all about them. “Just think—if we hadn’t met her we wouldn’t be looking forward to Lighthouse Island and a dear old uncle who owns the light——”

   “Anybody would think he was your uncle,” said Vi.

   “Well, he might just as well be,” Laura retorted.

   “Connie says that he adopts all the boys and girls about the place.”

   “And that they adopt him,” Billie added, with a nod. “He must be a darling. I’m just crazy to see him.”

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