CHAPTER XXV BETTER DAYS
There was no time for explanations that night. The fire had been checked;the cottage and the rare books were safe, but there were many otherthings to be attended to. It was several days before Lucile met HarryBrock again and then it was by appointment, in the Cozy Corner Tea Room.
Her time during the intervening days was taken up with affairs relatingto her new charge, the child refugee, Marie. She went at once to FrankMorrow for advice. He expressed great surprise at the turn events hadtaken but told her that he had suspected from the day she had told thestory to him that the books had been stolen from Monsieur Le Bon.
"And now we will catch the thief and if he has money we will make himpay," he declared stoutly.
He made good his declaration. Through the loosely joined but powerfulleague of book sellers he tracked down the man with the birthmark on hischin and forced him to admit the theft of the case of valuable books. Asfor money with which to make restitution, like most of his kind he hadnone. He could only be turned over to the "Tombs" to work out hisatonement.
The books taken from the university and elsewhere were offered back tothe last purchasers. In most cases they returned them as the child'srightful possession, to be sold together with the many other rare bookswhich had been left to Marie by Monsieur Le Bon. In all there was quite atidy sum of money realized from the sale. This was put in trust forMarie, the income from it to be used for her education.
As for that meeting of Lucile and Harry in the tea room, it was littlemore than a series of exclamations on the part of one or the other ofthem as they related their part in the mysterious drama.
"And you followed us right out into the country that night we went to theRamsey cottage?" Lucile exclaimed.
"Yes, up to the wall," Harry admitted. "The water stopped me there."
"And it was you who told the police I was in danger when that terribleman and woman locked me in?"
Harry bowed his assent.
He related how night after night, without understanding their strangewanderings, he had followed the two girls about as a sort of bodyguard.
When Lucile thought how many sleepless nights it had cost him, her heartwas too full for words. She tried to thank him. Her lips would not formwords.
"But don't you see," he smiled; "you were trying to help someone out ofher difficulties and I was trying to help you. That's the way the wholeworld needs to live, I guess, if we are all to be happy."
Lucile smiled and agreed that he had expressed it quite correctly, butdown deep in her heart she knew that she would never feel quite the sametoward any of her other fellow students as she did toward him at thatmoment. And so their tea-party ended.
Frank Morrow insisted on the girls' accepting the two-hundred-dollarreward. There were two other rewards which had been offered for thereturn of missing books, so in the end Lucile and Florence foundthemselves in a rather better financial state.
As for Marie, she was taken into the practice school of the university.By special arrangement she was given a room in the ladies' dormitory. Itwas close to that of her good friends, Lucile and Florence, so she wasnever lonely, and in this atmosphere which was the world she was meant tolive in she blossomed out like a flower in the spring sunshine.
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Transcriber's note:
--Copyright notice provided as in the original printed text--this e-text is in the public domain in the country of publication.
--Obvious typographical errors were corrected without comment.
--Dialect and non-standard spellings were not changed.
--Promotional material was moved to the end of the book, and the list of books in the three series was completed by using other sources.
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