“I know,” admitted Georgina. “First we had to wait so long for your portrait to be finished and then you went off on the yacht, and all in between times things have happened so fast there never was any time. But we found something just as good as pirate stuff--that note in the rifle was worth more to Uncle Darcy than a chest of gold.”
“And Captain Kidd was as good as a real pirate,” said Richard, brightening at the thought, “for he brought home a bag of real gold, and was the one who started us after the wild-cat woman. I guess Uncle Darcy would rather know what she told him than have a chest of ducats and pearls.”
“We can go next summer,” suggested Georgina.
“Maybe I won’t be here next summer. Dad always wants to try new places on his vacation. He and Aunt Letty like to move. But I’d like to stay here always. I hate to go away until I find out the end of things. I wish I could stay until the letter is found and Dan comes home.”
“You may be a grown-up man before either of those things happen,” remarked Georgina sagely.
“Then I’ll know I’ll be here to see ’m,” was the triumphant answer, “because when I’m a man I’m coming back here to live all the rest of my life. It’s the nicest place there is.”
“If anything happens sooner I’ll write and tell you,” promised Georgina.
Something happened the very next morning, however, and Georgina kept part of her promise though not in writing, when she came running up the Green Stairs, excited and eager. Her news was so tremendously important that the words tumbled over each other in her haste to tell it. She could hardly make herself understood. The gist of it was that a long night letter had just arrived from her father, saying that he had landed in San Francisco and was taking the first homeward bound train. He would stop in Washington for a couple of days to attend to some business, and then was coming home for a long visit. And--this was the sentence Georgina saved till last to electrify Richard with:
“_Am bringing Dan with me._”
“He didn’t say where he found him or anything else about it,” added Georgina, “only ‘prepare his family for the surprise.’ So Barby went straight down there to Fishburn Court and she’s telling Aunt Elspeth and Uncle Darcy now, so they’ll have time to get used to the news before he walks in on them.”