“It was ’most all day,” sighed Sue.  “And we were terrible glad when daddy and mother found us!”

“I should say you were—­well, very glad,” laughed her mother.  “But here we are at our house.  Now come in, Lucile and Mart, and make yourselves at home.”

“And after you get warm, and have had something to eat, maybe you’ll tell us about how to get up a show in a theater—­not one in a tent like a circus,” suggested Bunny.

“Yes, we’ll help you all we can,” promised Lucile.

Mrs. Newton, coming to the Brown house ahead of the others, had got a nice lunch ready, and from the way Mart and his sister sat down to it and ate it was evident that they were very hungry.  It was nice and warm in the Brown house, too, and the children from the vaudeville troupe seemed to like to be near the fire.

“Now if you have had enough to eat, perhaps you will tell me a little bit more about yourselves,” suggested Mrs. Brown, when the two visitors were ready to leave the table.  “I want to help you,” she went on, “and I can best do that if I know more about you.  My husband is in the boat and fish business here in Bellemere,” she said, “and though he is not as busy in winter as he is in summer, he may find work for you,” she added to Mart.

“I hope he can!” said the boy.  “Well, I’ll tell you about myself and my sister.  You see we come of a theatrical family.  Our father and mother were in the show business up to the time they died.”

“Oh, then your father and mother are dead?” asked Mrs. Brown kindly.

“Yes,” went on Lucile.  “We hardly remember them as they died when we were little.  We were brought up by our uncle Simon and Aunt Sallie.  They were in the show business, too, and they traveled under several different names.

“Sometimes we traveled with them, and again we’d be off on the road by ourselves.  But whenever we went alone that way Uncle Simon would always get some one, like Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, to look after us and take charge of us.  So we didn’t have it so hard until Uncle Simon and Aunt Sallie went away.”

“Went away!” exclaimed Mrs. Brown.  “Where did they go?”

“That’s what we can’t find out,” answered Mart “They left their address for us with Mr. Jackson, but he lost it, and now we don’t know where our uncle and aunt are.”

“But surely some one knows!” said Mrs. Newton.

“Well, yes, I guess Uncle Bill knows, but we can’t find him,” said Mart.

“You seem to belong to a lost family!” exclaimed Mrs. Brown, with a smile.  “Who is Uncle Bill, and where is he?”

“We don’t know where he is, but he’s blind,” put in Lucile.  “The last we heard of him he was going to some Home for the Blind, or to some hospital to be cured.  But we don’t know where he is.  If we could find him he’d have Uncle Simon’s address, for Uncle Simon used to always write to Uncle Bill.  Of course Uncle Bill had to get some one to read the letters to him.  But we haven’t seen either of our uncles for a long time.”