Hunt
and father's name was Stephen Waller."

"You say your father's name was Stephen Waller. Do you think he is
dead?"

"I think so sometimes and sometimes I don't. I don't know what to
think. If he is alive why didn't he come back to Mother and if he is
dead why didn't Mother know it for sure? When the war got over we
thought he was coming home and Mother stopped crying and soldiers kept
on coming back and Daddy wasn't with them. And she wrote letters to the
President and everybody and nobody seemed to be able to tell her much
of anything about Daddy. One time after a big fight he was missing and
still some of the men in his regiment say they saw him alive but they
don't seem to know just where. And it was all so mixed up and Mother
got awful sick and then Uncle Chester came."

"Didn't your mother have any brothers or sisters or any relations of
her own?"

"No, ma'm, she never did have any and her mother and father died when
she was little and she was brought up in France in a convent 'cept'n
she wasn't a Catholic."

"Did you live in a house in Atlanta or an apartment?"

"We had a great big house and three automobiles and a whole lot of
servants. Cousin Dink says I am lying when I say that because she wants
people to think we are poor little orphans that she had to support. I
know her tricks."

"What was your address in Atlanta?"

"Oh, gee! I've let out Atlanta and I reckon I might as well tell the
address."

Josie wrote it down. She could trust herself to remember any name, but
she was more careful with numbers.

"You don't know where they took your mother? To what sanitarium?"

"No, they never told me and when I asked Uncle Chester he pretended at
first he didn't hear and then when I kept on asking him he told me to
shut my mouth. Uncle Chester had always been nice to us but then he got
as sour as pickles."

CHAPTER VI
A SUCCESSFUL DISGUISE

When Josie and her little friends reached the Children's Home they
found Mary Louise waiting for them.

"It is all right," she whispered to Josie. "Dr. Weston and I have had
the whole board on the line one by one and we have talked them into
letting the poor kiddies stay. It is against the rules of the board to
take children who can give no credentials but all the same we have
worked it. Poor lambs, where else can they go? If Danny and I had not
moved into such a tiny flat we might have taken them, but as it is--"

"As it is you and Danny had better be b