“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.