CHAPTER VIII

Slowly Erica got out of bed and went over to the bundle Tommy had left with her earlier that evening. Her hands were cold and shook a little, so that she bungled the knots clumsily as she untied the string, but her mind was firmly made up to attempt the reckless plan which had come to her with her first waking from that very vivid dream. She was going to China on the _Spray_, if the thing could be contrived, to have a share in the search for Lis.

She took Tommy’s discarded suit out of the bundle and held it up in the moonlight. It was too small for Tommy and would probably be too big for her, but it would have to do.

Fifteen minutes later a slim, red-headed boy, wearing a rather battered old cap and Tommy’s coat and trousers, and carrying a bundle under one arm which contained a girl’s frock, a red, woolly cape, and a bonnet, stole on tiptoe out of the room, down the front stairs, and out of Cousin Kate Kingsley’s front door into the raw, penetrating chill of five o’clock of an April morning.

It was still quite dark in the street—darker, as a matter of fact, than last evening, because the street lamps were out now. Erica shivered, partly with cold—for Tommy had left her no overcoat—and partly with sheer nervous excitement at the rash adventure to which she was committed.

She had hidden under her pillow a hasty, much-blotted note to Aunt Callie, telling of her undertaking. Some one would find it when they made her bed, but not soon enough to stop Erica herself from boarding the _Spray_—that is, supposing she succeeded in prevailing upon Mrs. Haven to stand sponsor for her.

It was only a five-minute walk from Cousin Kate’s to the big, red-brick house she remembered so vividly from last evening. Lights were burning brightly in all the front windows, upstairs and down, as Erica turned the corner, and a handsome carriage and pair stood before the door, already well laden with various sized and shaped bags and boxes.

For a long moment Erica debated, standing irresolutely on the corner, whether to go up boldly, ring the bell and proffer her astounding request, or to wait until the lady came out on her way to the carriage.

While she still argued with herself, Erica saw a portly coachman descend from the box and mount the house steps, probably for a final load of luggage. Opportunity beckoned, and without stopping to debate further, she impulsively answered the summons.

Hurrying down the street, she cast one last frightened glance over her shoulder at the lighted house behind her, and, opening the carriage door with a quick jerk, popped into the darkness inside like a terrified rabbit scuttling into its burrow.

The carriage was pretty well filled with bags, save for a corner of the back seat which had been left free for the traveler. But Erica was a slender girl, and she managed, by pulling and pushing the boxes a bit, to slip into a sort of niche on the floor between a huge dressing-case and what felt like a small-sized trunk standing on one end.

For a few seconds after she had gained this temporary hiding-place Erica was quite unable to make out sounds around her because of the loud pounding of her own heart in her ears. But after a while this quieted down and she could hear two people coming down the stone steps of the house toward her.

One of these must be the portly coachman, she decided, for she heard a man’s voice; then still another box or bag was piled up on the driver’s seat, and some one opened the carriage door and put a foot on the step.

“Pretty crowded in here, Jeffreys,” Erica heard the rich, chuckly voice of Mrs. Haven remark, and a hand came into the darkness exploringly.

“Want I should move them bags round a little, ma’am?” the man Jeffreys asked, and Erica’s heart fell to pounding again, lest his offer be accepted and her own inevitable discovery result.

“No, never mind,” she heard the traveler say. “It’s not far to the wharf. I can squeeze in somewhere.”

Jeffreys, judging by the way the carriage rocked, thereupon mounted to the box, and Mrs. Haven climbed gingerly into the crowded darkness inside and sat down rather heavily in the vacant corner of the seat, which was, fortunately, the one farthest from Erica. There was a crack of Jeffreys’ whip, a creaking of protesting springs, and they were off.

Erica tried to marshal her jumbled thoughts into coherence and decide how best to make her presence and her position known. That matter, however, was taken out of her hands and decided for her by an unexpectedly severe jolt over uneven cobblestones, which flung her out of her hiding-place and across the intervening bags, bringing her up with her startled red head against her no less startled traveling companion’s knee.

Mrs. Haven screamed shrilly, clutching at her heart with one hand and Erica’s curls with the other. Luckily the noise of the creaking springs, the jouncing bags, and the clatter of their wheels over the cobblestones prevented old Jeffreys up in front from hearing his mistress’s shriek, and Erica spoke desperately before she could utter another.

“Please, ma’am, it’s—it’s all right. Only let me explain!” she implored.

The carriage was now crossing a wider thoroughfare, and the first gray light of dawn was brighter here than in the narrower streets hemmed in by houses. Not only outlines now, but some of the details of objects near at hand could be made out.

Mrs. Haven, her fingers still buried in Erica’s hair, pulled the latter’s head nearer the carriage window and stared at her piercingly. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, she began to laugh. Of a truth there was nothing very alarming in the slim boyish figure crouched among the bags at her feet, or in the frightened face with its wide-open sea-blue eyes and mop of tangled red curls.

“Boy,” she said, trying to make her tone severe and not succeeding very noticeably, “how did you come in my carriage? And what on earth do you want? I am just starting off on a long journey to China and have no time to waste.”

“I—I want you to take me to China with you,” Erica gasped. “I knew you were going. I overheard you talking to that ship’s boy last evening in front of your house. I—heard you speak of wishing you had decided to take your nephew. Couldn’t—couldn’t you just get me on board the ship by pretending I’m in your charge, and keep me with you till the ship’s under way? The captain won’t turn back then to put me ashore and if I can only get to Canton I’ve got a godfather out there who will take care of me. Oh, please, please, ma’am, do help me! I somehow _must_ get to China!”

The lady continued to stare at Erica in amazement—as well she might—at having a strange boy tumbled so suddenly into her carriage among her traveling-boxes, to utter a wild request like this, with lips and voice that trembled, and frank, unmistakably honest eyes that pleaded for him.

“Look here, boy,” Mrs. Haven asked, finally, weakening in spite of herself at the sight. “I suppose you’re in trouble of some kind, that you want to run away. But if you’ll give me your word it’s nothing—nothing dishonest or—_bad_ you’ve done——” She paused uncertainly, and Erica took heart.

“I give you my word,” she said, solemnly, “I haven’t done anything wrong—not in the way you mean it,” she added, hurriedly, for her conscience was already beginning to prick her a little as to how Aunt Charity and her father would view her action when they came to learn of it.

“Where’s your mother?” Mrs. Haven demanded next. But this time her hand patted Erica’s hair relentingly.

“She died when I was born,” Erica said. “Wait—maybe I’d better tell you why I have to go.” And as they jolted noisily along, she poured out the tale of Lister’s mysterious disappearance and of her Chinese godfather who was their only hope now of getting news of the boy. She kept back prudently the fact that Tommy was already sailing on the self-same errand; that her father was captain of a clipper ship plying back and forth to China, who might be supposed entirely capable of handling any search necessary; and, last and most vital of all, she gave no hint that should correct Mrs. Haven’s belief in the genuineness of her masquerading.

“You look awfully young to go to sea,” the other said, doubtfully, at the end of the tale, but her black eyes had quickened into eager interest as the various _Arabian Nights_ aspects of the situation were skillfully set forth by Erica’s nimble tongue. A lost cousin, a mysterious Chinese godfather, the seal ring with the strange Chinese characters Lis had worn away—it sounded to kindly, foolish Mrs. Haven like something from one of the romantic and always highly improbable novels she reveled in.

“I’m fifteen,” Erica informed her truthfully. “And I’m quite strong. I always have been.”

“Well, you don’t look much more than eleven or twelve,” Mrs. Haven demurred. “But I’ll do my best to get you on board. I’ll say you’re a young friend I’m responsible for taking out to his relatives in Canton. That’ll be literally true. I couldn’t tell a lie, of course. Here we are now, at the wharf. You let me do the talking, and we’ll come through right enough.”

The carriage drew to a stop and Jeffreys, descending from his box, opened the door. The sight of a pretty red-headed boy sitting on the boxes inside, where apparently no boy had been at the start of the short ride, caused the rather prominent eyes of Jeffreys to appear to be trying suddenly to leap from their sockets. He looked from Erica to his mistress, blinked, attempted to speak, and choked instead.

“Oh, Jeffreys, I believe I did not tell you this young gentleman was coming with us,” Mrs. Haven had the presence of mind to say quickly. Jeffreys blinked again.

“No—eh—no, ma’am,” he agreed, meekly.

It was indubitably a true statement of facts, although it explained nothing of his very natural bewilderment. Still, Mrs. Haven was not a lady who was much given to explaining, so Jeffreys, after a third stare at the calm-faced Erica, turned rather red and began taking out the bags and boxes in silence.

It was quite light on the wharf now, and Mrs. Haven stood by the carriage, her eyes scanning the dark harbor water anxiously, for she was not a good sailor and was mortally afraid of trusting herself in small boats.

Then with a little cry of delight she caught at Erica’s arm, pointing. “There’s that nice young man the captain sent ashore last night to tell me what time to be at the wharf,” she exclaimed. “How polite of him to come to meet me this morning.”

Erica, following the plump, pointing finger, half shrank behind the rotund figure of her benefactress, and felt her heart go—_flop_—down into the regions of her boots at one plunge.

[Illustration: “THERE’S THAT NICE YOUNG MAN THE CAPTAIN SENT ASHORE LAST NIGHT TO TELL ME WHAT TIME TO BE AT THE WHARF”]

This was the very worst luck that could have met her at the outset of her adventure. No possible chance of deceiving Tommy either as to her identity or as to his own cast-off garments she was wearing. If the _Spray_ had been moored to the wharf she might have succeeded in slipping by him and up a gangplank unnoticed. But with a trip in the _Spray’s_ boat, with all of them huddled together in the closest of quarters, she had just no chance at all. And very well she knew how Tommy would look upon her present expedition, and what he would do. If only she could have avoided meeting him until the _Spray_ was heading out to sea, he would have had, perforce, to make the best of the situation.

Her glance went huntedly behind her for an avenue of escape. If Tommy need never know! But if she pulled away from Mrs. Haven’s hand on her arm and ran, there might be a regular hue and cry after her. That red-faced Jeffreys would be certain to put the worst possible construction on her flight. She was sure he was a little suspicious of her presence there, as it was.

Despairingly she heard Mrs. Haven hail Tommy in friendly fashion, and saw the boy jump briskly to his feet from the piece of timbering on which he had been sitting, talking to another boy in sea-going garb, whose back was turned to Erica.

Wave after wave of burning red swept across the girl’s face. Another instant now, and Tommy would recognize her, would take in at a glance the meaning of her masquerade. Suddenly she seemed to see the whole silly, impulsive plan as not only Tommy, but Aunt Charity, Aunt Callie, and her own father would view it. The kind of reckless, troublesome, unconsidered plan a child makes, and rushes into headlong, without a thought for the consequences. And at fifteen one was not supposed to be _that_ sort of child any more.

Tears of humiliation and disappointment blurred the blue eyes abruptly, so for a moment she could not see what was making Mrs. Haven, beside her, exclaim again in an astonished voice.

“La! my dear! and mercy me! Which on earth is which?” the plump good-natured widow was gasping excitedly. “Look, boy! Did you ever see two such peas in a pod before?”

Erica shook two big tears off her lashes impatiently, and looked inquiringly ahead of her as she was bid.

Then every bit of color went out of her face. She took an unsteady step forward, staring wildly at the two tall, long-legged youths in seafaring clothes who were striding jauntily down the wharf toward Mrs. Haven’s carriage, their arms flung across each other’s shoulders, their brisk feet keeping step.

Incredulously Erica continued to stare, wordlessly, as they came nearer; came as she had so often watched them cross the garden to Aunt Charity’s gate or come charging up Orange Street joyously, arms across each other’s shoulders as now, gay feet keeping step to some old familiar march whistled in an undertone; two young faces, flung back cockily, fresh and untroubled as the morning, and so exactly alike that at a distance even Erica herself sometimes couldn’t tell—Lis and Tommy! _Lis_—alive, safe, well—arm in arm with Tommy swinging up the Boston wharf here before her unbelieving eyes in the mellowing dawn of that April morning.

No wonder Erica, panting, a little dizzy between incredulity and sudden joy, dropped cap and bundle and, wrenching her arm from Mrs. Haven’s grasp, went running to meet the approaching pair as if she had suddenly donned the famous seven-leagued boots of the old fairy stories.

The astonished Mrs. Haven beheld the three figures—the two young sailors and her slim little red-headed _protegé_—meet like a whirling sandstorm, swing madly about in a circle, arms linked, feet executing a war-dance of fantastic steps, while three voices—two deep boyish ones and a surprisingly shrill treble—rose in a regular pæan of jubilee. The deep voices cried, “Ricky!” in varying tones of joyous amazement, and the shrill little treble soared above them both, with “Lis! Lis! It’s _Lis_!”

Then the whirling circle broke, and the three, their hands still clasped, stood back and surveyed one another with a dozen eager questions plainly burning the tips of their eager tongues.

“Lis, how did you get here?” Erica begged, earnestly. “Surely Tommy didn’t know yesterday——”

“Of course I didn’t,” Tommy broke in, quickly. “You can’t imagine I wouldn’t have told mother if I had known.”

He broke off in his turn, and the twins stared hard at their strangely metamorphosed young cousin. Lis’s eyes were curious and a trifle amused, but Tommy’s mouth set in a new grim line.

“Rick,” the latter said with abruptness, “what are you doing down here at this hour, in those old clothes of mine?”

Erica crimsoned. So it had come at last, only now she must face both twins instead of just Tommy. She would never hear the end of this rash escapade; she knew that.

“Won’t you please tell me about Lis first?” she begged, trying to stave off confession.

“No,” Tommy declared, bluntly, “we won’t. This other matter comes first.” His eyes narrowed with a swift suspicion. “Rick, you were never thinking of such a fool trick as trying to stow away on the _Spray_!” he cried, accusingly.

Erica sighed resignedly. “Yes, I was, if you must know it,” she assented. “I see now it was a crazy idea, and I vow, Tommy, I never really planned it. I first dreamed I was doing it, and I woke up and—and all at once there was the plan in my head, and the next thing I knew I _was_ doing it——”

Mrs. Haven, full of curiosity and interest, had drawn nearer, and now her eyes widened and her mouth fell slightly open in her astonishment as the supposed red-headed boy she had intended taking under her wing on the voyage to China burst half coherently into the utterly dumfounding narrative of the past events of the morning hours.

“So—so you’re a _girl_!” she ejaculated. “Mercy on us! Whatever is the world coming to when nice, well-brought-up girls cut off their hair, put on boy’s clothes, and run away to sea! I think it was very naughty and deceitful of you to take me in so,” she concluded, indignantly. “What would your family have thought of me, when they found it out?”

But that was more than Lis’s soft heart could bear, directed at Erica. It was all well enough for Tommy and himself to scold and tease her when they saw fit, but no outsider and stranger could call Ricky deceitful while either Tommy or he stood by. Ricky’d been silly again—she was always getting into trouble by following her impulses too blindly—but she’d never told a lie or been intentionally deceitful in her life.

This, stammering a little in his earnestness, he endeavored to make clear to the chagrined Mrs. Haven, and at last, by convincing her that Erica’s story was entirely correct as far as it went and that he himself was the lost cousin, just returned from China safe and sound, he made her forget entirely her disapproval in a quick and generous delight at this happy ending of the tale.

“I won’t say another word,” she promised, “if you’ll let me hear how you got lost and then came to be found again. Haven’t we time before going on board?” She appealed wistfully to Tommy, who nodded assent.

“Well,” Lis began, “it’s really all due to Ricky, here, that they found out who I was, in the end. Yes”—he turned to Erica, whose face was glowing—”it was that seal ring of Sun Li’s you hung round my neck before I sailed. Remember? And by the way,” he added, explanatorily, “Sun Li’s not his real name at all. I suppose Captain Bartlet has told you he’s governor of Canton?” Erica and Tommy both nodded, and Lis resumed his story.

“It seems Uncle Eric once did a favor of some kind for Sun Li when they were both young men. That was before he was governor, of course. I don’t know what it was—the favor, I mean—but Sun Li’s never forgotten. Uncle Eric was trying to learn some Chinese at the time, and in his efforts to pronounce his new friend’s long and very unpronounceable name—I’ve heard it, of course, myself, but I can’t say it, either; it takes a Chinese tongue—well, as I was saying, ‘Sun Li’ was the nearest Uncle Eric could twist his own tongue to it, and they kept the name going as a sort of friendly joke between them. Then came that time when you, Ricky, were born at sea and Aunt Cecily died just as Uncle Eric’s ship was nearing Canton. Sun Li’s own little son died the same day, and he sent the child’s nurse to take care of you on the voyage home. But you and Tommy know that part of the story. Only, of course, all that made the friendship closer than ever between the two men.”

“Yes. Oh, Lis, go on, _quick_!” Erica breathed, her eyes shining. Mrs. Haven, her own face alight with interest, drew nearer and slipped a forgiving arm about Erica’s shoulders.

“Well, to skip ahead to the night I went ashore from the _Spray_ to have a last look-see at the city of Canton,” Lis continued. “I had been paid that morning, and foolishly I took the money ashore with me in my pocket. Not that it was a big sum, of course, but any money looks big to those Chinese bandits. I had father’s gold watch on, too. I’ll know better another time. You can guess the rest. I wandered into a lonely-looking side street, quite far into the heart of the city, and that’s all I remember about it. Some thief, or thieves—I don’t know how many there were—must have jumped me from behind, out of one of those dark compound gateways. They got away with my money and the watch, but, luckily for me, they didn’t find Sun Li’s seal ring. It began to rain about that time, and I must have lain there in the street in the wet for maybe two hours, when a kind old, absent-minded Chinese scholar, jogging home in his sedan with his coolie bearers, found me and took me to his own house and nursed me like a Christian gentleman. I was out of my wits for days, what with the blow on my head the bandits had given me and a cold and fever I’d caught lying so long out in the rain.”

Both Erica and Mrs. Haven uttered little cries of horror and pity, and Tommy clenched both fists fiercely, but made no other comment.

“At first,” Lis took up his tale again, trying to laugh off the tragic air of the other three, “they didn’t find the ring, because the cord round my neck had broken and the ring itself was caught in the lining of my coat. The Professor—that’s what I called him, he really was a quite famous authority on Chinese history—lived so much by himself, he never heard of all the inquiries that were being made for me in the city. But one of the servants, in cleaning my coat, found the ring and brought it to him. The Professor recognized Sun Li’s seal and was quite frightened. So he sent it off in a hurry to the governor, relating how and where he had found it—and me. And of course after that it was all plain sailing. Sun Li sent for me when I was able to be up and about, and gave me an audience in the most gorgeous old hall, hung with silks and banners and smoking torches, that you’ve ever dreamed of. As the _Spray_ had sailed the day before, he sent me home by the _Lightning_, Captain Culverson, you know—which was also sailing for Boston, luckily for us all, that same week. And here I am.”

“But—but”—Erica was stammering in her excitement—”but how did you come _here_ this morning with Tommy?”

Lis pointed out into the harbor, past the _Spray_ at her anchorage, to where a new clipper, her white wings furled and her tall masts raking the blue sky, lay at anchor.

“We got in late last evening,” he explained, “and it wasn’t till it was light this morning that I saw my own ship, the _Spray_, was right in the next berth, so to speak. So I got permission from Captain Culverson to be rowed over to the _Spray_ bright and early, and, to my astonishment, found Tommy preparing to come ashore to meet a passenger, and came with him.”

”_W-well!_” Erica sighed. She was quite exhausted with emotion and the morning’s excitement. “It’s the most wonderful thing I ever heard of, Lis. But”—her forehead puckered suddenly—”but, Lis, which of you is sailing in the _Spray_ this morning—you or Tommy? For I suppose one of you must go.”

“I am,” Tommy put in, quickly. “Lis has had one voyage, you know, and, besides, I was the one who was to have shipped in her originally.”

“And I guess Aunt Callie needs to have Lis near her for a while,” Erica put in, happily. “We all do. Oh, Lis, it’s been such a—a terrible time!”

Ten minutes later, a third and final good-by having been said to Tommy, he piloted his passenger into the _Spray’s_ boat, and Lis and Erica, hand in hand like two children, walked back to Cousin Kate’s through Boston’s early-morning streets, now beginning to be astir with the traffic of the day.

“And sometime,” Lis was saying to an eagerly attentive Erica, “Sun Li wants your father to bring you out to Canton, to visit in the governor’s palace, Rick.”

Erica merely sighed blissfully. Words were beyond her. All her worries and troubles had broken like the early-morning mists about them, and the sun of a happy present and a joyously beckoning future was shining through.