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Rh the particulars. Then papa will start an inquiry, I think. Poor Will! I hope he is not—not hurt!" and again Grace showed symptoms of tears.

"Now stop that!" commanded the Little Captain sharply. "You know it does no good to worry. Wait until you have some real facts to go on."

"Yes, do," urged Mollie.

"But he isn't your brother," said Grace in retort. "How would you like it, Mollie Billette, if Paul should be missing some day?"

"Oh, I'd feel dreadful, of course. But Paul and Dodo get into so many scrapes," she added, with a curious shrug of her shoulders, in which she betrayed her French ancestry—"so very many scrapes, my dears, that we are past being shocked."

But, for all Mollie spoke so lightly, she knew—and so did her chums—that should anything happen to the twins Mollie would be the first to show emotion.

"Have you heard no word from Will himself?" asked Betty, after a pause.

"Not a word, and that makes it seem all the worse. If we only had some word—something to go by, we might not feel so bad. But it came like a bolt out of a blue sky—what Uncle Isaac