“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.