what a day for a swim!"

"That's just what we were going to do when we saw you coming," Billie
confided, thinking how exceedingly handsome he looked in his white
trousers and dark coat. Then she told him of the wild scramble they had
had to get dressed, and she looked so pretty in the telling of it that he
did not hear much of what she was saying to him for looking at her.

"But what made you so sure it was us?" asked Teddy ungrammatically.

Billie chuckled and gave a little skip of pure happiness.

"Laura said she felt it in her bones," she said.

CHAPTER XX

OUT OF THE FOG

That afternoon the boys and girls went in swimming and that evening
Connie's mother treated them all to a substantial dinner such as only she
knew how to cook.

And the way it disappeared before those ravenous girls and boys made even
Mr. Danvers hold up his hands in consternation. But Connie's mother
laughed happily, pressed them to eat everything up, "for it would only
spoil," and looked more than ever like Connie's older sister.

That night the boys were put up in a spare room which contained one bed
and two cots which Connie's mother always kept stowed away for
emergencies. For the cottage on Lighthouse Island was a popular place
with Mrs. Danvers' relatives and friends, and she often had unexpected
company.

They went out on the porch a little while after supper, and the boys were
at their funniest and kept the girls in a continual gale of merriment.

The time passed so quickly that before they knew it eleven o'clock chimed
out from the hall inside and in consternation Connie's mother hurried
them all off to bed.

"To-morrow is another day," she added with a little smile.

As they started up the stairs Teddy looked down at Billie and said
boyishly:

"Say, Billie, you've got _some_ sunburn, haven't you? You're--you're
mighty pretty."

Then Teddy blushed and Billie blushed, and Billie hoped with all her
heart that Laura had not heard it.

Laura had not, for she was talking and laughing with Paul Martinson and
Connie. And so Billie, running ahead and reaching her room first, turned
on the light and stepped over to the mirror.

Was that Billie, she wondered, who gazed back at her from the mirror? For
this girl was surely prettier than Billie ever had been. Her eyes were
shining, her cheeks were flushed under their tan, and her hair, a little
tumbled by the bre