There was no need to call twice for Eleanor bounded back and took down the receiver. The girls had returned to the main corridor and waited eagerly. They heard a glad cry which assured them that it was indeed Mrs. Burgess, but they were surprised at Eleanor’s first remark. “Mother, are you really home? I mean here at grandfather’s place? Oh, I can’t wait to get there, and you have a surprise for me? Well, then, I have a surprise for you! Yes, yes, Mumsie. I’ll come at once. I’ll get Micky to take me.”

When the girl turned toward them, Virginia thought she had never before seen a more glowing face. Eleanor tried to speak but choked and holding out her arms ran to Virginia and clung to her, sobbing. Then she reached out a hand and drew the wondering Peggy to her.

At that moment the mystified Mrs. Dorsey appeared at the head of the basement stairs. “Girls, why don’t you come? Your lunch will be that cold, ’twill be no good at all, and I took such pains making what I knew you’d be liking.”

“Eleanor dear, come down with us. You and Peggy are just as hungry as we are, and, after lunch, if Mrs. Dorsey is willing, I will accompany you in the bus.”

Reluctantly the girl permitted herself to be led to the dining room but she was so excited, so eager to be gone that she could hardly eat, but Virginia knew that Peggy could, and she did, though she kept watching her new cousin with big round eyes. Strange things were surely happening and there was a vague feeling of lonesomeness in her heart. She had never before been separated from Winston, her brother.

After the rather hurried meal, Micky, whom Babs had notified, drove up with the bus and Virginia accompanied Eleanor and Peggy. The other girls agreed that Virg was the right one to go. “For who can be a greater comfort if the surprise should be a sad one?” Megsy asked them.

But it was not. It was so wonderful a surprise that it was almost hard to believe that it had really happened.

When the bus stopped in front of the side door, Eleanor suggested that Peggy stay in it with Virg, while she went alone to greet her mother. When she bounded up the steps, the door opened and there stood, not the frail little woman who had set sail with the doctor’s wife a few months before, but one who radiated health and an inward joy. Instantly Virginia, watching, knew that the surprise was not to be a sad one, and how glad she was. Then the door closed, but almost at once it opened again and a most excited girl leaped down the steps and raced out to the bus. “Oh, Virg!” Eleanor cried. “Aunt Dorinda is found. Doctor Warren found her in a hospital where she had been taken when the boat went to pieces right in the very harbor and everyone was rescued. Oh, how I wish Winston were here, but I’ll telephone to Drexel before he can go to Boston. There isn’t another train out until night.”

Catching Peggy by the hand she ran with her into the house. Then a few moments later returned, asking Virg if she would come in and meet her mother and Aunt Dorinda.

“Not today, dear. Shall you return with us now or would you like to stay over-night with your mother?”

“I’ll stay until Mrs. Martin comes back,” Eleanor said. “Phone me, won’t you, the minute she returns?”

Virginia agreed that she would, and then she bade Micky drive back to the school. The girls were waiting eagerly on the wide front porch and when they heard what the surprise had been, the irrepressible Betsy led the school cheer. “My, but I’m glad! I shall treasure that red feather as long as I live!” she ended, by saying.

“Maybe some time in the future it may lead you on another adventure,” Babs said.

“Who knows?” Betsy beamed. “But next time I hope there will be a mystery for me to solve.”

“Poor little detective who never succeeds,” Babs teased.

For once Betsy did not retort, but she determined that before many moons she would unearth a mystery that she could solve, nor was she wrong, though the nature of it the merry little maid did not even guess.

A week later Vine Haven Seminary had settled back into its usual routine. Mrs. Martin had returned rested and enthusiastic over the interesting trip that she had taken. Of course Mrs. Dorsey had thought right to tell all that had happened, and even offered to resign if Mrs. Martin felt that she had been at fault, but the principal, who was always just, assured the anxious matron that she was in no way at fault nor indeed did she blame the girls.

Eleanor had not appeared until the morning when the first classes were to report and then she told her friends how overjoyed Winston and his mother had been to be reunited. “And the best of it is that the two sisters are going to stay on grandfather’s place and make a real home of it, and Winston’s dream has come true for he has a farm of his own to do with whatever he wishes, and, as for Peggy, next year she is to come to Vine Haven with me.”

The girls were all unusually studious during the remainder of May, for were not the final exams near at hard, and Virg had added to her other duties, the pleasure of editing the last Manuscript Magazine for the year.

And yet there were hours, and many of them (usually at night when the other girls were asleep), that she lay, watching the stars, and yearning for the loved ones on the far away desert. “Would she find any changes?” she wondered.