ow and be happy."

"It will be a very nice place for Mother to find us in," said Jan. "She
will come pretty soon now, I should think."

"I hope she may," said Madame Dujardin, tears twinkling in her eyes.

"I'm sure she will," said Marie. "You see everybody is looking for her.
There's Granny, and Mother and Father De Smet, and Joseph, and the
people in Rotterdam, and the people in England, too; and then, besides,
Mother is looking for herself, of course!"

"She said she would surely find us even if she had to swim the sea,"
added Jan.

XIV

THE MOST WONDERFUL PART

And now comes the most wonderful part of the story!

Madame Dujardin prepared a bath and said to Marie: "You may have the
first turn in the tub because you're a girl. In America the girls have
the best of everything", she laughed at Jan, as she spoke. "I will help
you undress. Jan, you may get ready and wait for your turn in your own
room." She unbuttoned Marie's dress, slipped off her clothes, and held
up the gay little wrapper for her to put her arms into, and just then
she noticed the locket on her neck. "We'll take this off, too," she
said, beginning to unclasp it.

But Marie clung to it with both hands. "No, no," she cried. "Mother
said I was never, never to take it off. It has her picture in it."

"May I see it, dear?" asked Madame Dujardin. "I should like to know
what your mother looks like." Marie nestled close to her, and Madame
Dujardin opened the locket.

For a moment she gazed at the picture in complete silence, her eyes
staring at it like two blue lights. Then she burst into a wild fit of
weeping, and cried out, "Leonie! Leonie! It is not possible! My own
sister's children!" She clasped the bewildered Marie in her arms and
kissed her over and over again. She ran to the door and brought in Jan
and kissed him; and then she called her husband. When he came in and
saw her with her arms around both children at once, holding the locket
in her hands, and laughing and crying both together, he, too, was
bewildered.

"What in the world is the matter, Julie?" he cried.

For answer, she pointed to the face in the locket. "Leonie! Leonie!"
she cried. "They are my own sister's children! Surely the hand of God
is in this!"

Her husband looked at the locket. "So it is! So it is!" he said in
astonishment. "I thought at first you had gone crazy."

"See!" cried his wife. "It's her wedding-gown, and afterward she gave
me those very beads she