“Bill can make ’em for us all right. Soup tablets, meat tablets, bread tablets—why, you can put a meat tablet between two bread tablets and have a sandwich, and carry a whole table d’hôte dinner in a pill-box. Here, boy, tell Mr. Sturritt to step up here, if he’s not busy. Tell him I’ve got important news for him.”
Clearly it was but a huge joke to Mr. Gale. I was willing to enter into the spirit of it, however. He turned to me as the boy disappeared.
“Of course, we can’t expect to find anybody living there.”
“Why not? Nature never yet left a habitable country unoccupied. We shall undoubtedly find a race of people there—perhaps a very fine one.”
He regarded me incredulously a moment, and then thumped the desk at his side vigorously.
“That settles it! Johnnie’s missionary work’s cut out for her. It’s a great combination, and we can’t lose! Balloons, tablets, missionary work, and homes and firesides! A regular four-time winner!”
He was about to touch the bell again when there came a light tap at the door near me, and a woman’s voice said:
“Mayn’t I have some of the fun, too, Daddy?”
My spirits sank the least bit. The mental image I had formed of Miss Gale, the missionary, was not altogether pleasing, while her advent was likely to put a speedy end to any thread of hope I may have picked up during my rather hilarious interview with her father. Gale, meanwhile, had risen hastily to admit her, and I had involuntarily turned. It is true the voice had been not unmusical, but certainly I was wholly unprepared for the picture in the doorway. Tall, lithe and splendid she stood there—the perfect type of America’s ideal womanhood.
Gale greeted her eagerly.