Miss Jennie Ann laughed at their doleful faces.  “She will soon be with us again,” she declared.  “I’ll tell you a secret.  She is coming home to the houseboat day after to-morrow.  She whispered to me to-day that there was really no reason why she should stay any longer with Mrs. Curtis, and that she did not wish to presume on her hospitality.  Mrs. Curtis is very fond of her.  She does not wish Madge to leave her.”  Miss Jones looked so mysterious that the girls regarded her curiously.  “I think it is a good thing for Madge and for Mrs. Curtis to spend a few days together.  Mrs. Curtis is lonely and needs good company,” added Miss Jones.

“So do we,” murmured Phil, with a rueful laugh.  “We need Madge as much as Mrs. Curtis does.”

After the girls had left her, Madge lay back luxuriously among her linen pillows.  She was looking very lovely in a pale pink silk tea gown Mrs. Curtis had insisted on her wearing, for Madge had arrived at the hotel with no clothes other than the wet garments she had on when rescued from the waves.  Her fine clothes occupied very little of her thoughts, however.  She had something of far greater import on her mind.

The time had come to tell Mrs. Curtis that she must go back to the houseboat.  She was not sorry to go; she was only sorry to leave her new friends.  During her stay at the hotel Mrs. Curtis had treated Madge as though she were her own daughter.  The imaginative young girl was completely fascinated with the beautiful, white-haired woman, whose sad face seemed to indicate that she had suffered some tragedy in her life.  While Madge lay thinking of the most courteous way in which to announce that she must return to the “Merry Maid” a light knock sounded on her door.  Tom’s mother came softly into the room, gowned in an exquisite afternoon costume of violet organdie and fine lace, which was very becoming to her white hair and youthful face.

“Are you awake, Madge?” were her first words.  “How do you feel?”

Her guest smilingly raised herself from her pillows.  “I am awake as can be, and as well as can be!  To tell you the truth, Mrs. Curtis, I have never been in the least ill from my adventure.  I was tired the day after it happened, but since that time I am afraid I have allowed you and Tom to believe that I was sick because I liked to be petted and made much of.”  Madge laughed frankly at her own confession.  “You have been so good to me, and I do appreciate it, but now I must go home to my comrades.  Eleanor was awfully disappointed to-day when I told her I was not going back with them this afternoon.”

“I wish you would stay with me longer,” pleaded Mrs. Curtis, taking the girl’s firm brown hand in hers and looking down at it gravely, as it lay in her soft white one.  She gazed earnestly at Madge’s clear-cut, expressive face.  “Tom and I will be lonely without you,” she said.  “I want a daughter dreadfully, and Tom needs a sister.  If only you were my own daughter.”