Kate and old Mammy Laura bustled about a good deal when Nita was brought into the bungalow; and very shortly she was tucked into one of the beds on the second floor in the very room—in which Ruth and Helen and Mercy were to sleep—and Miss Kate had insisted upon her swallowing a bowl of hot tea.
Nita seemed to be a very self-controlled girl. She didn't weep, now that the excitement was past, as most girls would have done. But at first she was very silent, and watched her entertainers with snapping black eyes and—Ruth thought—in rather a sly, sharp way. She seemed to be studying each and every one of the girls—and Miss Kate and Mammy Laura as well.
The boys came home after a time and announced that every soul aboard the Whipstitch was safe and sound in the life saving station. And the captain's wife had sent over word that she and her husband would go back to Portland the next afternoon. If the girl they had picked up there on the dock wished to return, she must be ready to go with them.
"What, go back to that town?" cried the castaway when Ruth told her this, sitting right up in bed. "Why, that's the last place!"
"Then you don't belong in Portland?" asked Ruth.
"I should hope not!"
