WHILE Mrs. Crane was supplying Dave with a bountiful meal, the girls were telling Billy about Rosa Marie, Marjory, Aunty Jane, the porcupine—in short, all the news of that eventful day. Billy, with brightening eyes, was certainly enjoying it all, particularly the part about Terrible Tim.
"Once," began Billy, reminiscently, "when I was a kid I saw——"
But what Billy had seen could only be guessed, for the brightness slipped from his eyes and he pulled the corner of his blanket over his face.
"I can't remember a blamed thing," he mumbled, with a catch in his throat.
"Cheer up," teased Henrietta, gently. "Nobody 'd want to remember anything that looks like Terrible Tim. But when you see him, you'll probably remember what you were going to say. Did they tell you that you're to come outside to-morrow and lie in a hammock with soft-boiled eggs? Oh, I mean you're to eat the eggs. Aren't you glad?"
"I like eggs," said the boy, uncovering one eye. "Chicken, too, and roast beef."
"Perhaps Dave will get you a partridge—Doctor Bennett said you could eat that. Did you ever eat partridge?"
"Yes," returned Billy.
"Where?" demanded Bettie and Henrietta, with one voice.
"At—at—oh, it's gone!" wailed Billy, "when I had it right at the end of my tongue."
"Don't worry," soothed motherly Jean. "You're a lot better than you were yesterday. We can all see that."
"Think so? Well, maybe I am. Is that—yes, it is milk toast. Tastes just like food. Sure I'm ready for another bite."
"It's the good sweet cream those people brought," said Mrs. Crane.
"I hope," murmured Billy, between bites, "they'll come often."
"I don't," protested Mabel. "Visitors are a nuisance—they stir things up too much."
"Her mother scrubbed her," laughed Henrietta, "and brushed a lot of sand out of her hair—didn't you hear terrible wails? But Mabel was glad to see her mother, just the same."
The threatening clouds that had so alarmed the two launch-men passed harmlessly over Pete's Patch; and the next day proved so fine that Billy was moved to a hammock under the trees, where the overlapping leaves of huge maples formed a most attractive roof. The change agreed with him; fortified with fresh eggs and fresh air he grew stronger with astonishing rapidity; a rapidity that proved alarming to Mrs. Crane; for, like Bettie, this new invalid was no sooner on his feet than he made tracks for the alluring lake.
"If I had a bathing suit," said Billy, when Mrs. Crane had, for the fourth time, forbidden him to wade in the lake, "I'd go in swimming—then you couldn't pull me out so easily."
"But, Billy——"
"All right, I'll be good," promised Billy, "but that's a mighty fine bunch of water—say, couldn't you make some swimming tights for a chap?"
"When you're strong enough to swim," agreed Mrs. Crane.
Physically, young Billy improved by leaps and bounds; but the stronger he grew, the more he worried over his strange lapses of memory.
"Sometimes I dream things," complained Billy, one day. "And when I wake up I wonder how much of it is true. Last night I thought I was falling down, down out of an airship and I called 'Mother, mother! I can't find my umbrella.'"
"Have you a mother?" asked Jean, quickly.
"I don't know. But I think so—I dream of some person who says: 'Now don't do that, Lad—Lad——'"
"Laddie," supplied Bettie, promptly.
"Laddie!" shouted the boy. "That's it—it didn't get away that time."
"Sometimes," said Laddie-Billy, another day, "when Dave comes into sight, I almost call him by another name; but the name doesn't quite come—I think I've known somebody—in a boat, perhaps—that looked like him."
There were many things, fortunately, that the boy had not forgotten. He handled his knife and fork properly, ate his soup daintily, and proved later that he had once been able to row a boat; though at first, of course, his strength had been unequal to very strenuous efforts with the oars. In spite of his unhappy experience with the lake, he seemed, strangely enough, to be exceedingly fond of the water and to feel not the slightest fear of it. Mrs. Crane, indeed, would have been glad to find him more cowardly; for, long before the purposely delayed bathing suit was ready, Billy had gone in swimming in his only clothes. Also, it was next to impossible to keep him out of the boats.
Time proved, too, that the water-loving castaway was a bright lad. He could read and write very readily in English, knew a little French, and was rather clever at figures. Often, when glancing through the advertising pages of magazines, his expressive face would light up and Laddie-Billy (as the girls now called him to please Mabel) would exclaim, joyfully: "I've seen that picture before."
But the things that the curiously afflicted boy wanted to remember refused obstinately to come; and this grieved him sorely.
"I suppose," said Billy, one balmy evening, when all the youngsters were roasting potatoes between two glowing logs, "I'm really well enough to go home, but—but where is my home?"
"You needn't worry about that," assured Mrs. Crane. "We're more than willing to keep you right here—as long as you don't tumble out of those boats."
"Yes," added Mr. Black, heartily, "we really need a boy to help us when Dave is busy breaking the game laws. I'm only afraid that Saunders will come along some day with an answer to that advertisement. You're well worth keeping, my lad."
"I'm glad of that," smiled Billy, cheered by these kindly assurances. "I'll try to be, anyway."
"We all like you," declared Mabel, "even if you are getting fat."
"Am I?" queried Laddie-Billy, anxiously. "Gracious! If I do, these clothes—can it be that I'll come to wearing a blue plaid bathing suit all the time?"
For Mrs. Crane, for want of other material, was slowly converting her biggest and most gorgeous gingham apron into a decidedly queer bathing costume for her lively charge.
"The bagginess," Mrs. Crane explained, when the castaway suggested mildly that part of the cloth might be saved for other purposes, "will fill up with air and keep you from sinking."
And naughty Henrietta had added, under her breath: "Behold Billy Blue-eyes, the Human Balloon."