CHAPTER XXII—A MYSTERY CLEARED

For the proverbial nine days, tongues wagged furiously at Highland Hall; but seemingly to good purpose. The girls who had allowed doubts of Sallie and Marjory to creep into their hearts now strove earnestly to make up for their former unjust suspicions. Even the Seniors came down from their lofty perches long enough to stuff both girls so full of cream puffs and chocolate creams, dill pickles, ripe olives and angel’s food cake that for three days after this never to be forgotten feast they were unable to eat their regular meals.

“As for my legs,” laughed happy Marjory, after the next social evening, “they’re just ready to drop off—I’ve had so many invitations to dance.”

“So have I,” said Sallie. “Isn’t it great!”

“And the way those two Seniors scrapped over Marjory at the spell down today!” exclaimed Maude. “They both called at once and she was the very first one called. The rest of us were green with envy.”

“We’ve all been more popular lately,” said Bettie. “I’m afraid Laura did us more harm than we realized.”

“I think so, too,” said Jean. “I’ve felt all this week as if large black clouds had rolled away and let a great big chunk of sunshine drop right down into Highland Hall.”

“There’s one cloud left,” mourned Henrietta. “I don’t get a single scrap of encouraging news about my father; and now, every time I look at poor old Abbie, I say: ‘Just suppose anything happens to my grandmother and the family money. Where will I be? Right here washing windows like Abbie and looking for seven years’ bad luck because I’ve smashed a looking glass.’”

“Poor Abbie has enough foolish superstitions to keep her in bad luck for ninety years,” laughed Jean. “You and Sallie seem to be haunted by the same nightmare. I’ll promise you both this; on the day that you and Sallie get to looking just like Abbie, I’ll start for Europe on foot.”

With Laura gone, Highland Hall seemed really a different place. Now, except for occasional scraps among some of the older pupils, one realized that there was a wonderful spirit of friendliness among the girls. Even the once frosty Seniors had thawed to an unusual degree.

“They’ve gotten used to themselves,” explained Sallie, who had had almost six years’ experience with Seniors of assorted kinds. “At first they are always so set up over all their privileges that they just can’t associate with ordinary girls; but after a few months of solitary grandeur they are glad to climb down off their perches and associate with the rest of us. Now that they’re asking us to their spreads and coming to ours they’re having much better times than they did earlier in the year.”

“Of course,” said Maude, with one of her funny grimaces, “you can’t ‘spread’ so very much on thirty cents a week; but our popcorn party was all right and when we all chipped in and bought a barrel of apples—that was great. The Seniors’ heels looked just like anybody else’s when they dove to the bottom of the barrel for the last ones. And our molasses candy pull in the laundry—”

“Ugh!” groaned Mabel, “I was just like a web-footed duck—my hands, I mean. Cora had to scrape me all over with a knife and she didn’t care how much skin she got. It was even on my shoes—”

“What! Your skin?”

“No, the candy. Some folks can pull it when it’s hot and sticky but I never can. It just gets all over the place.”

“Anyway,” said Marjory, wickedly, “the Seniors laughed until they cried, seeing you try, so you contributed something to the entertainment.”

“Isn’t it lovely to have friends?” said Sallie, a little later, when she was seated beside Marjory on the veranda steps.

“Yes,” returned Marjory, a little wistfully, “but I’m not sure that I’m exactly pleased with some of my newest ones. Augusta and Grace Allen told me yesterday that they never did like Gladys. And Isabelle says she’s ashamed to have Clarence know that she ever went with Gladys. Isn’t that just awful—to go back on anybody like that! Of course I don’t care much for Isabelle or Augusta, anyway; but I did think I might like Grace. But now I’m not going to. I like friends that stick.”

“So do I,” agreed Sallie, heartily. “And I think we both have some of the sticking kind.”

One spring morning just after morning prayers when all the pupils were gathered in the Assembly room and Miss Woodruff was ready to call the roll, Doctor Rhodes stood up and said: “One moment, please.”

There was a little creaking all over the room as the girls settled themselves in listening attitudes. Doctor Rhodes was sure to be interesting.

“I have a little confession to make,” said Doctor Rhodes. “Perhaps some of the older girls will remember that I called them into my office immediately on their arrival last fall, told them a piece of very sad news and asked them to keep a secret for me.”

Some of the seats creaked again as several of the older girls nodded their heads.

“I believe,” continued Doctor Rhodes, “that you have all faithfully kept that secret, which is still a secret from the new girls. This is it. I am not the Doctor Charles Rhodes, whose name is in our catalogue and has been in our catalogue for nearly thirty years. I am his cousin, Doctor Julius Rhodes; a physician, not a Doctor of Laws—you have noticed the letters LL.D. after my cousin’s name.

“Some of you will remember that Doctor Rhodes was ill last June at Commencement time. He died in July. I was his nearest relative; and, in time, when his affairs are finally settled, I shall inherit his estate. The lawyers considered it unwise to announce Dr. Rhodes’s death at that time, though of course there were the usual notices in the papers. But no changes were made in the catalogue and no formal notices were sent to the pupils; as it seemed almost certain that any such announcement would cause the attendance for the following year to fall off, perhaps to the lasting detriment of the school. The lawyers suggested that I take charge of the school and keep it going, particularly as Doctor Charles Rhodes had expressed a wish to that effect.

“I was handicapped in one way. The courts were not yet ready to hand over to me the surplus fund of school money in the bank. I had very little capital to put in and certainly no experience with boarding schools for girls. I was not a teacher. Perhaps you have noticed that your instructors, with two exceptions, are members of my own family. They very kindly consented to help me through this first year; and I think you will agree that they have proved fairly good teachers, even if that hasn’t always been their regular profession. Miss Woodruff, of course, and Miss Blossom are regular teachers. I thought I might venture to afford two.

“I think you will agree that my most serious blunder was the engaging of Madame Bolande—I assure you that I didn’t see her first. Except for that one regrettable mistake, everything has gone so well and so prosperously, that I have decided to tell the whole truth now (and take the consequences if there are any) instead of waiting, as my lawyers advised, until my cousin’s estate is fully settled. I shall feel happier with everything quite open and above board. That’s all, except that I feel much indebted to the young ladies who have so kindly kept my secret to the present time.”

Of course, for a day or two after that, Highland Hall buzzed again with excitement and the newer girls besieged the older ones with questions.

“Doctor Charles Rhodes,” explained Sallie, “was a perfectly lovely old man. Everybody just adored him; he was so gentle and sweet. He hadn’t any family of his own left; but he seemed, some way, as if he were everybody’s grandfather. He was wonderfully good to me and to poor old Abbie too. In his time we had our pocket money just as the other girls did—out of his own pocket, I suppose. If Abbie had been bright to start with she wouldn’t have been the forlorn creature that she is now. He gave me every chance to learn; and I’m sure that Abbie had the same chances but was too stupid to take them. Probably no one but a kind man would have kept Abbie; she’s never been good for very much.

“But when this new Rhodes family came, it was all so different. At first, I didn’t like Doctor Julius Rhodes at all—or any of his family. But after awhile I began to see that things were not so terribly easy for them. The housekeeping job proved awfully hard on poor Mrs. Rhodes and she just sort of stiffened up under it in a queer way. I guess she’s a good deal of a mummy anyway and this job makes her more so. She is harder on Abbie and on me than the old housekeeper used to be; but at that her looks are the worst part of her.”

“Well,” agreed Henrietta, “she can’t help her looks—that’s the way she was made.”

“I like Dr. Julius Rhodes much better than I did at first,” continued Sallie. “I hated him at first. Of course he doesn’t look one bit like his cousin; that was one reason. In the next place, I hated having those people flock down here in my dear old Doctor Rhodes’s own home; and in the third place, it didn’t seem quite right to me to keep a thing like that hidden—to let people go on supposing that it was still Doctor Charles Rhodes when it wasn’t. But I overheard Dr. Rhodes and one of those lawyers talking in the office one day and I gathered then that Doctor Rhodes didn’t like keeping that secret himself—he wanted to tell, but the lawyer said it wasn’t good policy. And now, even if this Doctor Rhodes isn’t a lovely, gentle, sweet old man like Doctor Charles, I think he makes a very good head for this school. And when he is able to handle the school funds, there will be more regular teachers and he won’t have to work his family quite so hard.”

“At that,” said Maude, “the family isn’t so bad. Mrs. Henry is a dear, everybody says that old Miss Emily is terribly thorough and Miss Julia certainly makes the girls practise. And you all know, I’d gladly swap Miss Woodruff for any one of them—I still have seven pages of American History to learn by heart and recite.”

“But tell me,” pleaded Henrietta, “did they really open the girls’ letters, as Cora thought they did, to see if they’d written home about that secret.”

“Mercy, no!” replied Sallie. “They have to look over the addresses on those letters. They do it every day. Your folks wouldn’t get half of your letters if they didn’t—the girls are always leaving off towns or states or stamps. But only one of them ever writes ‘Dear Clarence’ on the outside of her envelope.”

CHAPTER XXIII—PIG OR PORK?

The spring did perfectly wonderful things to the land adjacent to Highland Hall. It was really time that something was happening to improve that rather cheerless prospect. During the fall and winter months, the landscape had been mostly brown and gray and black, often more or less disfigured with patches of dingy snow; and a general misty bleakness surrounded the big, rather ugly building. But, with the coming of spring all this was changed. One could now see why the school prospectus had stated that Highland Hall was “beautifully located.”

The building stood at the top of a broad knoll. The level portion of this was covered by a well kept lawn—tall, lanky Charles, with his sandy hair on end and his angular elbows greatly in evidence, might be seen galloping over it with his lawn roller, getting certain bare spots ready for seed. The sloping banks were grassed also but this grass grew at its own sweet will; and then, quite suddenly it wasn’t grass but long stemmed violets. You could gather tremendous bunches of them and still there were millions left—popular Miss Blossom was fairly besieged with bouquets. Then, farther down the hillside were great patches of snowy bloodroot and miniature groves of mandrake with their hidden, creamy, heavily perfumed cups. There were wild crab-apple trees wreathed with wonderful pink and white buds and blossoms. The edges of the unsightly ditches along the road suddenly became brilliantly green and pink with oxalis and there were sheltered nooks along the margin of the grove that were blue with mertensia or purple with the spider lily. Even the dry prairie was bursting forth with bloom; the lovely lavender of the bird’s foot violet and later the showy blossoms of the shooting star. There were gorgeous blue jays and orioles in the trees and meek gray doves in the hedges.

All the girls except Henrietta seemed bubbling over with happiness these days. Even Sallie, dreadfully shabby as to clothes and growing shabbier, was more cheerful, because she loved the spring season at Highland Park; and because she had never before possessed so many warm friends among the pupils. But Henrietta was visibly drooping. Her eyes wore a strained, anxious look and every day at mail time, her brilliant color deserted her, leaving her pale and trembling and quite unlike her usual vivacious self. At sight of a telegram arriving for Doctor Rhodes—and he often received as many as four a week—Henrietta’s lips would turn absolutely white. And several times, on the days when her grandmother’s letters came with no news of her still missing father, the girls had found her weeping. It was decidedly unlike Henrietta to weep.

But even Henrietta loved the wild flowers. Sallie knew where to find the choicest blossoms and Doctor Rhodes, glad to have the girls spend their leisure hours outdoors, even if it did increase their appetites alarmingly, extended their bounds a good half mile toward the south so the girls could roam at will.

One beautiful day, when school was dismissed earlier than usual, Mabel asked permission to take her friends as far as the cottage that contained Charles’s interesting family.

“I’m awfully fond of children,” explained Mabel. “I get lonesome for them when I don’t have any. Several times I’ve given candy and little presents to Charles to take home to those cunning babies; but I’m just dying to see them again and some of the girls want to go, too.”

“I’ve no objection to your seeing them,” said Doctor Rhodes, with a friendly chuckle, “but you are strictly forbidden to accept any invitations to stay with that family and you are not to bring any of them home with you.”

“I won’t,” promised Mabel. “Thank you ever so much for letting us go.”

The long walk over the blossoming prairie was wonderful and the other delighted youngsters thanked Mabel for planning the trip. The children at the cottage proved interesting and sweet and the girls loved them. Tommy remembered Mabel and said: “Please stay wiz us, you is nicer than Lizzie,” which pleased Mabel very much indeed, though of course she didn’t stay. The shy twins soon became friendly and even the baby was smiling and responsive. Mrs. Charles had been making cookies and generously passed them around. Then Maude looked at her watch and said that it was time to start back.

The girls decided to go home by the road that wound along over the prairie and somewhat west of the more direct but pathless route they had taken to the cottage. It was longer but Sallie said that interesting things grew along the edges. Even Sallie, however, was surprised at one thing they discovered. Mabel, who was trudging sturdily along, a little ahead of the others—and of course she had a right to lead the procession since it was her party—suddenly stopped short.

“Mercy!” she gasped. “What’s that!”

“What’s what?” asked Sallie, crowding to the front. “Is it a new flower? Oh! Why, that looks like a little pig!”

“But ’way out here!” cried Maude. “It couldn’t walk so far and there are no farms along here.”

“But the farmers ’way south of here,” returned Sallie, “send them in to the packing houses or down to the trains along this road. Probably this one got spilled out of somebody’s wagon and the driver never missed him.”

“No doubt,” said little Jane Pool, “the other piggies squealed so hard that the poor man never heard the cries of distress from this one.”

“It’s so little and pink and clean,” said Bettie, admiringly.

“But so naked,” objected Marjory. “It really seems as if it ought to be wearing baby clothes—little woolly ones. I’m glad it’s a warm day.”

“See,” said Mabel, “it’s sucking my finger—I think it likes me.”

“It’s hungry,” said Sallie. “It seems too bad to leave it here to starve.”

“But we don’t want any pig,” objected Henrietta. “I don’t think I like pigs.”

“I’m sure I don’t,” said Maude. “Come on, girls, let’s climb up the ladder to that windmill over there and walk all around it on that ledge—I think it’s wide enough. We don’t want to be bothered with any pigs.”

But the lonesome little pig had no intention of being left behind. It trotted along at the girls’ heels and squealed piteously in its efforts to keep up.

“Poor little thing,” said Bettie, “it’s just starving.”

“And tired,” said Mabel. “Every minute or two it loses its footing and rolls right over. It thinks it belongs to us.”

“You’re afraid to pick it up and carry it,” teased Marjory.

“I’m not,” said Mabel. “I’m going to do it. The rest of you can climb all the windmills you want to, but I’m going to be kind to this pig.”

Whereupon kind Mabel picked up the pig and carried it. At first, however, the little animal squirmed and struggled so much that Mabel had all she could do to keep from dropping him.

“But what are you going to do with him?” queried Bettie.

“Oh, I’ll just slip around to the kitchen door—if I ever get that far—and ask Charles to take care of him.”

“Charles won’t be home,” said Sallie. “That’s the time of day he goes to the station to get the bread.”

“Then I’ll take him up to my room,” said Mabel, whose pet was now quite satisfied in her arms. “Perhaps you could bring up a cup of milk for him.”

“Mabel never comes home empty handed,” laughed Marjory. “And she isn’t particular what she brings, as long as it’s alive.”

“Won’t Isabelle be pleased?” laughed Maude.

“Lend him to me, Mabel. I’ll put him in Miss Woodruff’s bed.”

“No you won’t. I’m not going to have him abused.”

“Well, beware of Isabelle,” giggled Marjory.

Forewarned is forearmed. Mabel succeeded in slipping the pig into her bedroom closet without disturbing Isabelle who was busy writing what she was pleased to call “a poem.” She sent them, as she confided to Mabel, to her friend Clarence. Of course, when Isabelle had a pencil in her hand and that faraway look in her eye she was not likely to notice mere pigs.

Sallie had contrived a nursing bottle for the infant. Mabel, seated on the closet floor, succeeded in feeding her charge and presently made a nest for him by dumping the stockings out of her round mending basket; but to her surprise the pig, not being built that way, refused to curl. His tail curled beautifully but the rest of him wouldn’t. In no way, in fact, was he as accommodating an animal as a kitten or even a puppy.

“If he’d only just cuddle,” groaned Mabel, “he’d be so much more comfortable to live with.”

It was somewhere about midnight when Isabelle became aware of the pig. Mabel had been aware of him for a great many sleepless hours. Either he had had too much to eat or not enough. Perhaps he was only lonesome. At any rate he was quiet only when Mabel held him close to her own warm body and kept one or more of her fingers in his mouth. She had spent part of the night on the floor among the shoes; but the floor was hard and Mabel was sleepy; so finally she had crept into her own bed and taken the infant pig with her.

But nothing she could do seemed to please him. His squeals became louder and louder and more and more frequent. At last one of his very best squeals escaped from under the bedclothes.

“My goodness!” gasped Isabelle, suddenly sitting up in bed. “What’s that! Was that you, Mabel?”

“No,” returned Mabel, truthfully. “I didn’t speak.”

“It wasn’t a ‘speak’—it was more like a squeak.”

Piggy chose that moment to let out a smothered “Wee Wee!” in spite of Mabel’s restraining hand.

“Mabel, it is you. Are you sick?”

“I—I’m not sleeping very well,” offered Mabel, trying not to giggle. “I’m quite restless.”

“I thought I heard you eating things in the closet while I was writing. Perhaps you’ve made yourself sick.”

By this time Mabel was about helpless with laughter—it was so amusing to be taken for a pig. But just then her charge took a mean advantage of her. He squirmed suddenly, rolled out of bed and landed with a thump and an astonished grunt on the floor.

“My Uncle!” gasped Isabelle, leaping out of bed and switching on the light. “Are you killed!”

“For goodness’ sake keep still,” growled Mabel. “It isn’t me—it’s my pig!”

CHAPTER XXIV—STILL NO NEWS

It was raining that Thursday morning and nobody was pleased. The recitation rooms were dark and gloomy on rainy days and all plans for a pleasant afternoon outdoors were spoiled. Naturally the girls hated the idea of being confined to the veranda when prairie, grove and meadow were so much more inviting. The morning had seemed long and poky, lessons had proved uncommonly monotonous, there was nothing at all interesting for lunch and study hour had dragged; but at last, here was Sallie with the mail bag. Everybody but Henrietta brightened perceptibly. Henrietta looked as if she were trying—without very much success—to brace herself for a trying ordeal.

Mabel, however, looked cheerfully expectant. Nowadays there was always at least one letter a week for Mabel from Germany, and when it came Mabel always felt quite distinguished; she was the only girl who received letters from a foreign land. She felt especially elated whenever Miss Wilson, the very stiffest of the Seniors, begged for the stamps to send to her brother who was making a collection. On this particular day, there were letters for most of the Lakeville girls and for Mabel too; but all four of them were casting anxious glances in Henrietta’s direction. They had acquired the habit. Their hearts were wrung by her obvious suffering and by the courage with which she endured it. This long suspense was really getting to be hard on all of them.

“Miss Henrietta Bedford,” called Sallie.

Henrietta, pale and trembling, forced herself to step to the platform, received her letter, carried it to the window and nervously tore it open. Jean had followed her quietly and stood waiting to comfort her in case of need. After a moment or two, Henrietta pointed silently to the opening words and Jean read: “Still no news of your dear father.”

Presently Jean and Henrietta left the room and the sympathetic eyes of the other girls followed them to the doorway.

“That’s worse than losing a relative by sudden death,” said Eleanor Pratt, soberly.

“Yes,” agreed Elisabeth Wilson. “This suspense must be perfectly harrowing—in fact, I can see it is. Poor kid! I’m so sorry for her I don’t know what to do.”

“There isn’t anything one can do,” said Beatrice Holmes. “I’ve watched her every day at mail time and it’s just pitiful to see how she hates to open her letters.”

The mail distributed, some of the girls went to their respective rooms to remove from their persons the ink stains, chalk dust and other visible signs of a busy session in school. Others flocked to the veranda to stroll back and forth like caged lions grumbling in captivity.

“This is a beastly rain,” said little Jane Pool. “The ground is just soaked.”

“‘It isn’t raining rain, today,’” quoted Grace Allen, “‘it’s raining—’”

“Water,” said unpoetical Mabel.

“Violets,” concluded Grace.

“Water,” insisted Mabel.

“Violets,” said Grace.

“Both wrong,” said Debbie Clark. “It’s roses. We’ve had violets.”

“I don’t see any of those, either,” said Mabel, crossly. “It’s just plain water. I can’t even go to look at my pig.”

“You ought to sit beside him with an umbrella,” teased Debbie. “He may be getting drowned.”

“He’s all right,” assured always-comforting Sallie. “Charles moved him into the barn—he knew it was going to rain. Hello, Maude, why so pensive? What mischief are you cooking up now?”

“That’s just the trouble,” complained Maude. “Nothing will cook. I’ve been trying hard to think of something awfully wicked to do to cheer poor Henrietta up. The trouble is, when I really want to be bad I can’t do it. My badness always breaks out of its own accord when I least expect it; just when I’m really trying to be good. When it’s really necessary for me to be wicked, as it is right now, I surprise everybody—and especially dear Miss Woodruff—by being too good to be true. A regular angel child!”

“Still,” offered Hazel, “you managed to start something yesterday. I thought I’d die when I looked out the window and saw all you girls turning somersaults on the lawn.”

“What was that?” asked Isabelle. “I must have missed something.”

“You missed a lot,” assured Maude. “Charles left a large heap of stuff he had clipped from the hedges and the grass he had raked up after galloping around all the morning with his lawn mower, in a lovely big pile right in front of the office windows. Well, the minute I saw it yesterday afternoon, I forgot that I was a boarding school ‘Young lady’—I was back in my childhood—I was a girl again.”

“What did you do?” demanded Isabelle.

“You mean, how many did I do.”

“You didn’t really turn somersaults!”

“I did, and I loved it. And that was too much for Victoria. She did some, too—just lovely ones. So did Cora and Jane and Bettie—nearly all the West Corridor girls. All they needed was little Maude to start them.”

“You’d have thought they weren’t more than six years old,” said Hazel.

“What did Miss Woodruff say?”

“She was going to stop them,” returned Hazel, “but Doctor Rhodes and Mrs. Henry and Miss Blossom came out on the porch and clapped their hands and Doctor Rhodes said he’d give a prize for the girl that could do the best handspring. He offered a quarter, and who do you think got it!”

“Victoria Webster, of course.”

“Dead wrong. It was Eleanor Pratt.”

“What! Not Miss Pratt!”

“Yes. Fancy a Senior doing a handspring! She rushed right down and did a perfectly lovely one and Doctor Rhodes presented her with the quarter. The other two would have tried it next; but just then Charles came with the wagon to pick the stuff up and he was none too pleased at finding it all over the place so we helped him load the wagon. Next time he cuts the grass he’s going to make us a perfectly grand pile. He said he’d bring us up some of that long stuff from the meadow and we can have a regular party. It beats gym all hollow.”

“I’m going in,” said Isabelle, “it’s too wet out here.”

“So am I,” said Hazel.

“And I have to dust the drawing room,” said Sallie. “All those pictures of former graduating classes; all those proud Seniors in their white frocks. It’s particularly harrowing just now because I haven’t a decent rag to wear myself.”

Presently the porch was deserted and the bored girls went to their own rooms.

One of Sallie’s many duties at Highland Hall was to answer the doorbell at such times as the two neat maids were busy in the kitchen. Sallie had just dusted the class of 1897 and was beginning on the frame of class 1898, when the doorbell rang. It had taken her almost an hour to get that far because she had found a new interest in the pictures. She was examining the frocks and wishing that she might have tucks like these or ruffles like those or sleeves like some other one.

Ten minutes later, Sallie, very demure in the white apron that Mrs. Rhodes compelled her to wear when she opened the big front door to chance visitors, rapped at the door of room number twenty. Marjory opened it.

“A gentleman in the library to see Miss Henrietta Bedford,” announced Sallie, sedately. But Sallie’s eyes were dancing and she was a little breathless as if she had been running—as indeed she had—all the long way from the front door.

“A gentleman!” exclaimed Henrietta. “I don’t know any gentleman. Do you mean Doctor Rhodes?”

“I do not,” returned Sallie. “But don’t be frightened—there isn’t anything about this to frighten you.”

“Some one from Lakeville? Not Mr. Black?”

“No. You must come down and see for yourself. I was told to bring you.”

“I believe you and Maude have been up to some trick. You’re just fooling me. There couldn’t be a gentleman in the library to see me.”

“But there is,” declared Sallie. “You’ll just hate yourself if you don’t hurry. Do start. I want to see you moving before I deliver this Special Delivery letter to Isabelle—two cent stamps aren’t swift enough for Clarence.”

Henrietta laid her hairbrush down deliberately and started leisurely toward the door.

“Come on, Marjory,” said she, “I ought to have a chaperon if there really is a gentleman, but I’m pretty sure it’s Maude—she loves to dress up and play jokes on us. She might as well have two victims.”

“Do you suppose,” queried Marjory, in an awe-stricken whisper, when the pair had reached the top of the last long flight of stairs, “that it’s that silly Theolog that wrote you a note after he saw you at the concert? There really is a hat on the hat rack.”

“That’s what I’m wondering,” admitted Henrietta. “The silly goose makes eyes at me every Sunday. But surely he wouldn’t have the nerve to call here. If that’s who it is, I shall walk right back upstairs. I know it’s some joke. Sallie’s eyes were just dancing. Just at first I was frightened but I could see by Sallie’s face that it wasn’t anything dreadful.”

“You go ahead,” said Marjory. “If it really is your visitor—”

CHAPTER XXV—AN EXCITING FATHER

A tall man, who was very good looking indeed, stood beside the library table. A man of perhaps forty, with a fair skin, bronzed by much exposure to the sun, abundant light hair that grew in a pleasing way and fine blue eyes. He was gazing expectantly toward the door.

Henrietta, after one look at the visitor, was across the room with her arms about his neck.

“Daddy! Why, Dad!”

Marjory, wisely concluding that no chaperon was needed, slipped unheeded from the room and fled away through twisting hallways and long corridors to the West wing where she found that Sallie had already spread the news.

“Henrietta’s father,” breathed Bettie, “isn’t that great! And only two hours ago Henrietta was weeping on her bed because her grandmother’s letter was so discouraging.”

“Does he look like Henrietta?” asked Jean. “You know we’ve never seen him.”

“Not a bit,” said Marjory, “he’s fair—a regular blond. And oh, so good looking. She’s like the pictures of her dark mother, you know.”

“He looks just like an earl or a duke or something like that,” said Sallie. “When the Seniors see him they’re going to be glad that they were polite to Henrietta. He’s the best looking father that ever came to this school and I ought to know, because I’ve been making a study of fathers for a long, long time. Of course, most any kind of a father looks mighty good to me. I don’t envy Henrietta her good clothes, her pretty looks or her pretty ways; but I would like to wake up suddenly and find myself down in that library shaking hands with a father.”

In the meantime, Henrietta, who had been almost speechless at first, was making up for lost time. There were traces of tears on her cheeks but her eyes were joyful.

“So you went right straight to Lakeville from San Francisco and as soon as Grandmother told you where I was you came right here?”

“And I didn’t bring you a single thing. My luggage is still in Shanghai, I suppose. I believe I picked up some odds and ends in Canton. I was there for a very short time and foolishly neglected to cable Henshaw. When they rescued me from that coral reef, absolutely the only thing I owned was half a pair of trousers. I had to borrow clothes from the captain of the ship before I could land in San Francisco and I had to telegraph to London for money with which to travel east. Your Grandmother tells me that Henshaw has sent out a relief expedition—perhaps he’ll rescue my luggage. It seems to me I bought a mandarin’s coat and some beads—”

“I wouldn’t have cared if you hadn’t bought me a single thing. It was just you I wanted, Daddy. Don’t ever get lost again. It’s too hard on the family.”

“Do you know, it hadn’t occurred to me that you were grown up enough to worry; but, since you are, I suppose I’ll have to mend my ways. I have been careless a great deal of the time. I haven’t always written when I could; and of course, sometimes, I couldn’t. Now, couldn’t we go outside, some place? It seems dark and stuffy in here to a man who has lived on a coral reef for months.”

“Why,” cried Henrietta, “I do believe it’s clearing up.”

Henrietta was right. The rain had ceased, the sun was making up for lost time and in more ways than one it was now a pleasant day. On the veranda the happy little girl introduced her father to such of her special friends as were there and sent little Jane Pool flying after all the others. The entire West Corridor rushed down and out, as Maude said afterwards. Mr. Bedford bowed and smiled in a charming way and murmured: “Delighted, I’m suah.” He was not a talkative man, for which the girls were sorry because his speech was so delightfully English that the thoroughly American children were greatly impressed. They loved to hear him say “Cawn’t” and “Just fawncy,” and “Chuesday”—for Tuesday. And they were overjoyed when he asked Henrietta if she hadn’t better put on her “goloshes” before she walked on the wet grass.

Henrietta took her father for a walk to the village. It is to be suspected that she led him straight to the best candy store in the village because she returned later with an enormous box of chocolates. The girls were even gladder to see that her cheeks were glowing with some of their former bright color. Her father was placed in the company seat at Doctor Rhodes’s own table at dinner time that night; Henrietta sat demurely beside him; but occasionally she turned her head long enough to make an impish face at the girls at her own table.

“She’d rather be here,” said Jean, sagely.

“I wish she were,” said Maude. “I love to hear her father talk.”

It was bedtime before the West Corridor girls had a chance to hear all about it. They had flocked into Henrietta’s room and most of them undressed in there while listening to what she had to say.

“I’m going to do something wonderful,” said Henrietta. “First, I’m to spend tomorrow in Chicago with Father, and then he’s going right to England. Grandmother is going to meet us in Chicago, and what do you think! You couldn’t guess in a thousand years. We are both going right over to England with him so we can have a good long visit on the way. We’re going to stay just long enough for Grandmother to count her relatives over there—Father says it won’t be more than three weeks altogether—and then we’re coming back. I’m going to bring something to every one of you. I may even get to Paris for just about a minute—Father says he has to go there to tell something to the French Government about something he dug up somewhere.”

“How lovely!” cried Jean.

“How splendid,” cried Bettie.

“How grand!” cried Marjory.

“How perfectly sweet,” cried Cora.

“How darling,” cried little Jane Pool.

“But, Henrietta,” demanded Mabel. “You haven’t told us where your father has been all this time. Why didn’t he write?”

“Why, so I haven’t,” said Henrietta, “And this is my last chance—I’m going early in the morning, with just a few duds in a suitcase. Well, here’s the story, all I could dig out of him. I’ll sit on the dresser so you can all hear. It’s really quite a tale.

“Well, first he went to Shanghai because he’d heard of a temple that was different from most temples; but it was way up the Yengtze river—in China, you know—so he rushed right up there to look for it. It was on the estate of an old Chinaman who didn’t want any Englishmen or other foreigners poking round his old temple even outside—and it was said to be certain death to go inside. But father did manage to get inside and was copying some of the inscriptions as well as he could—it was too dark to use his camera and he didn’t dare make a flashlight—when something hit him on the head. He doesn’t know yet what it was.

“The next thing he knew, he was in kind of a dungeon, all stone and metal bars, under some building—that temple, perhaps, or possibly under a warehouse near the river. He says he doesn’t know why they didn’t kill him at once; but for some reason they didn’t. Just kept him there and gave him very little food once a day for weeks and weeks and weeks—he does not know exactly how long.

“Then, one night, when he had just about given up all hope of ever getting out of that place, four big, ugly-looking Chinamen came and tied a bag over his head and bound his hands and feet and loaded him into a boat and poled it down a river for hours and hours. They chattered a lot in Chinese but Father couldn’t understand them—his interpreter wasn’t with him when he went into the temple, and he doesn’t know what became of him. After a long, long time, Father heard sounds like men clambering aboard a vessel; but he thinks that the small boat he was in was towed for a long time behind some larger boat. He slept for part of the time, he says, and of course with that bag tied over his head he couldn’t see anything or even hear a great deal.

“The next thing he was really sure of was that his hands were free. By the time he got the bag off his head, there was an old Chinese junk—that’s a kind of a ship—way off in the distance, sailing away from him. He was alone in the boat but in one end of it he found a jar of water and some food. Also a long pole and a paddle. Of course he couldn’t reach bottom with the pole because he was out of the river by that time and quite far out at sea—in the Yellow Sea or possibly the Eastern Sea. You know how they run together along there; and he showed me what he thought might be the place, on the atlas in the library.

“Well, Father thought other boats might come along that way so he stayed right there for about six hours; but none did; so then he fastened the long pole up like a mast and ripped open that bag that had been over his head and used it for a sail. He found some bits of rope and string and some old fishing tackle stuffed into the bow of the boat and used them to tie his sail to the pole.

“He sailed wherever the wind took him and after awhile he was picked up by another Chinese junk. He thinks that the men aboard this one were smugglers or pirates or something. He tried to get them to take him to Shanghai or Hong Kong or some other Chinese port; but he was so ragged and dirty that probably they didn’t believe he’d be able to pay them what he promised—even if they understood him—and all he could get out of what they said was something about ‘Philippines.’

“But they never got to the Philippine Islands, if that’s where they were bound for. There was a typhoon—a sudden, terrible storm—and they were wrecked. My father and one very strong young Chinese sailor were thrown by the waves inside a coral reef that stuck up like kind of a fence, in a big half-circle. It made sort of a front yard to a small coral island and the water was smoother inside so they managed to swim ashore. But they were quite battered up at first and just crawled ashore on their hands and knees and fell asleep on the first dry spot.

“Their island was only a little one, just about big enough for two persons to live on. Fortunately there was a small spring of fresh water but it ran very slowly so that it took a long time to catch enough for a satisfying drink; and the young Chinaman was smart about catching fish and snaring sea birds and finding turtles’ eggs. There were lots of shell fish, too; and a box of rice washed ashore about the time they did and they saved some of that, so of course they didn’t starve.

“But they had to stay there for months and months and months; until another ship got blown out of her course and was almost wrecked on that coral fence outside their little island. As soon as that storm calmed down, the ship sent a boat ashore to explore the island. There were English sailors aboard her but the ship was going to Calcutta. Father says she was a rotten old tub but he and the Chinaman were glad to be rescued by anything. He wanted to go to England and he didn’t want to go to Calcutta; but after a day or two he had a good chance to be transferred to a much faster and safer ship bound for San Francisco so he took it. The Captain had to give him some clothes—he lost just about all he had left when he was swimming to the island. He sent a wireless to my grandmother from the American ship but for some reason she didn’t get it. And he didn’t telegraph her from San Francisco because he supposed she had received the wireless.”

“Tell us all the awful part of it,” pleaded Mabel. “Cannibals and tigers and things like that.”

“That’s one trouble with Father’s adventures,” complained Henrietta. “He doesn’t tell the ghastly details. He just gives the main facts. He must have been almost dead in that dungeon, he must have hated that nasty bag over his head, and he must have been almost drowned swimming ashore and almost scared to death in that typhoon; but he doesn’t say so. He did mention a shark in the lagoon—the Chinaman killed that with his knife. Of course I’ll be able to dig more out of him when there’s more time; but he won’t tell me the worst things; he never does.”