CHAPTER IX

As they turned the corner into Mount Vernon Street, a new problem occurred to Erica. She stopped short and faced Lister ruefully.

“How are we going to get in without waking them?” she demanded. “Of course, when I slipped out this morning, I didn’t know I was coming back, so I never thought of leaving the door on the latch. If Cousin Kate and your mother have to know I tried to run away to sea, they’ll think I’m more hopeless than ever.” She caught at Lister’s coat sleeve beseechingly. “You don’t think I ought to tell them, as long as I _didn’t_? You see, they’d never understand. I’ll tell father when the _Sea Gull_ gets back, and even if he doesn’t approve—and of course he won’t—he’ll understand I wasn’t just being naughty. That’s the beautiful thing about father, he sees into people’s real thoughts.”

Lis looked thoughtful for a moment. “No, I guess if you tell Uncle Eric, that’s enough,” he conceded. “There’s no sense in worrying the others. Now let’s put our heads together and try to think up a way to break in without rousing the house.”

They had reached Cousin Kate’s steps by this time, and stood there in the street, gazing up at the white-painted, closed door. The sun was almost up now, and the grey twilight of early morning was already shot with cheerful color. In a very little while the household would be astir. They had to think quickly if Erica’s escapade was to remain a secret.

Luck, however, was with them. A stronger puff of wind swept about the corner and the white door rattled under its onslaught, widened a crack, and then gently swung open before the astonished eyes of the girl and boy.

Erica uttered a little cry. “I don’t believe I pulled it quite to, after all,” she whispered, jubilantly. “Hurry and let’s slip in before anyone wakes. My! what a piece of good fortune! Only, I didn’t really deserve it,” she added, honestly, as they mounted the steps on tiptoe.

Standing in the dim hallway, Erica closed the door cautiously behind them, and motioned Lis toward the still darker parlor.

“Go in there and wait till they come down,” she commanded under her breath. “I’ll run up and get rid of these,” touching Tommy’s discarded suit rather shamefacedly.

She had scarcely gained her own room when she heard footsteps moving about on the floor below, where her aunt’s and Cousin Kate’s bedrooms were. Then some one, she was not sure which of the two it was, started down the stairs. Standing at her door, Erica listened breathlessly, and an instant later she heard a startled, incredulous cry from Aunt Callie.

”_Lister!_ My darling boy!”

She heard Lis say, “_Mother!_” in a choked voice, and then there was silence for so long that Erica began to be frightened. Had Aunt Callie fainted, perhaps? She had been thoughtless not to have realized Lis’s mother should have been prepared for such a surprise. Aunt Callie had always been delicate.

She began to pull on her own clothes with hurried, shaky fingers, and made a clumsy bundle of Tommy’s suit, which she stuffed into the dim back of the big wardrobe. Then, still nervous and apprehensive of what she might find, she ran down the two flights of stairs to the first floor.

But she need not have been anxious. They say joy never kills, and Aunt Callie certainly looked very much alive and very happy, seated in the deep armchair before the grate fire, with Lister kneeling on the hearth beside her, blowing the coals gently with a huge bellows. Both heads turned at the sound of Erica’s footsteps, and Mrs. Folger held out her arms to the girl with a motherly gesture.

“Come and see the mercy the good Lord has vouchsafed us this day, my dear,” she said, tremulously. “Lister has been telling me the marvelous story of his escape, and of his ship getting in this morning in time for him to meet Tommy, before the _Spray_ set sail.” She was so excited that she had not even thought of questioning how he had gained access to Cousin Kate’s house, Erica noted with deep thankfulness. But in the light of the greater interest of his story, it was no wonder lesser details seemed unimportant.

Before Erica had a chance to ask any of the questions Aunt Callie would be sure to expect of her, a happy diversion was caused by Cousin Kate’s entrance, and the whole thrilling tale had to be told over again for her benefit. Erica’s heart stopped thumping guiltily, and she and Lis exchanged glances of relief behind their elders’ backs.

“Isn’t it too bad Tommy couldn’t be here, too?” Cousin Kate said, regretfully. “But it was fortunate he had at least a few moments with his brother before sailing. He will go away with a mind at ease, at any rate. Now, who is ready for breakfast? There ought to be some heartier appetites this morning than we’ve seen so far.”

It was in the middle of an energetic attack on his fourth hot biscuit that Lis uttered an exclamation and laid down his knife.

“I’m forgetting all about old Sun Li’s message to Rick, here,” he declared. “And there’s a package, too. But the message comes first.”

He delved into several of his numerous pockets in turn before locating what he was in search of, but finally brought to light a slim oblong box, done up in the familiar orange paper and sealed with the queer gold seals they all knew.

Instead of handing it over to Erica’s eager, outstretched fingers, Lis grinned teasingly and shook his head. “I said the message came first,” he reminded her.

Erica made a face and then laughed. “All right,” she said. “What is it?”

“Well, I don’t believe I could repeat it word for word, for the life of me,” Lis confessed. “It was too high-flown and Chinese—not a word less than three syllables, and most of ‘em more. But the gist of the matter is that he’s longing to see his goddaughter, ‘The little Sea Girl,’ as he always refers to you. I’ve got a sort of idea, though he didn’t put this into actual words, that he associates you with his little dead son. You remember you were born on the same day. Anyhow, he even hinted that he might be induced to take a sea voyage himself—though the Chinese aren’t much on that, by custom. But he’s been in poor health for some time, and his doctors have done the unusual thing—from a Chinese viewpoint—of recommending a journey. However, that’s not the message. What he did ask me to tell you is that he begs your father will bring you to China in the _Sea Gull_, and that you will both visit him in his palace.”

A prolonged, ecstatic “_Ah-h-h!_” from Erica interrupted him here.

Lis nodded, his grin broadening. “Yes, ma’am, that’s the message. Also, that your rooms in the palace have been waiting for you for years, never occupied by anyone else, since his son died. And in the package I’m now about to hand you is the confirmation of this invitation.”

With a dramatic flourish Lis now handed over the gaudy, gold-sealed box, and Erica, snatching it, tore the coverings off with trembling fingers. Inside the orange paper was a tiny teak-wood box, about three inches long by an inch and a half wide. And inside that, on a bed of golden satin embroidered with lotus flowers, lay a thin silver key, banded with carved jade.

Erica lifted it out of the box with little cries of admiration and delight.

“You mean,” she gasped, “that this is the key of the rooms——”

”_Your_ rooms, he told me to tell you,” Lis said, quite gravely, his teasing forgotten. “He showed them to me while I was there. The _most_ utterly gorgeous place you ever dreamed of, Rick. Straight out of the _Arabian Nights_, I give you my word!”

Erica was staring at the lovely little key with dreaming eyes.

“This is the very nicest present he’s sent me yet,” she said with conviction. “Aunt Callie, do you suppose father _will_—Oh, he’s just got to! It would be something to remember and think about all the rest of my life, even when I’m an old, old lady.” She held the key out to her aunt. “Look at that exquisite flower pattern cut into the jade!” she exclaimed. “I believe I’ll wear it like a locket, on a black ribbon round my neck. It’s much too lovely to put away in a box.”

In a vague way Erica had dreamed of China and the possibility of her one day actually going there, ever since she could remember. But from the moment of her receiving Sun Li’s silver-and-jade key, her dreaming took on more definite form. Perhaps one reason for this was the fact of Lister’s having actually met her Chinese godfather and seen his wonderful old palace. Lis had done all the things she, Erica, had longed to do. He could describe them, too, and make every last, smallest detail vivid—for Lis was an observant boy, not like helter-skelter Tommy who could have given her none of the descriptions she clamored for.

Of course, for the first few days after they all returned to Nantucket, Erica did not have much time for planning for the future. It was enough just to have Lis back again, to hear him tell of his adventures by land and sea, and to realize that the past terrible weeks of suspense and fear were over forever.

There was so much to tell of what had happened during the months he had been gone. First and foremost, of course, he must be introduced to his two new adopted sisters, Milly and little Barbee Thorne.

It was no surprise to Erica that Lis should promptly lose his heart to Baby Barbee—everyone else in the family and the neighborhood had already done the same thing. But it did surprise, and perhaps—such being the way we erring humans seem to be inclined—disappoint her a little, too, when she found he did not share Tommy’s and her own dislike of the sullen-eyed, decidedly unfriendly Milly.

Of course at the time Captain Bartlet had brought the dreadful news of Lis’s disappearance, Milly _had_ unexpectedly risen to new, sympathetic comprehension of other people’s sorrows and feelings. Both Tommy and Erica had experienced a sudden swift remorse for what they then began to regard as their unfair judgment of the girl. But the mood—since it seemed nothing more on Milly’s part—gradually wore away, and even in the few days that had elapsed before Erica and Aunt Callie had left for Boston to see Tommy off, Milly had slipped back into her usual black-browed, unsmiling aloofness whenever she was with her younger cousins. True, her new gentleness had persisted where Aunt Callie was concerned; but then, no one, not absolutely stony-hearted, could have seen delicate little Mrs. Folger in her repressed, uncomplaining agony over her missing son, and not at once have lost himself or herself in considering her.