“Yes,” agreed Maude, “you certainly own an exciting father.”
“I’m so glad I still own him,” breathed Henrietta.
And then the girls slipped away to their own beds to dream of Chinese temples, junks, dark dungeons, yellow pirates, sunny reefs and sunburned fathers. And of course they were all glad to have their Henrietta again happy and free from care; for they had all suffered with her.
[CHAPTER XXVI—HENRIETTA IS MYSTERIOUS]
The girls began to miss Henrietta almost as soon as she was gone. For a small person, she left a tremendous vacancy. She was so lovely, so bright, so friendly with everybody and so very good to look at that it seemed, as Sallie put it, as if the sun had suddenly deserted the whole state of Illinois. Henrietta wrote to her friends, of course, but that wasn’t quite like having her actually on the premises.
One day, however, when Sallie was distributing the mail, the post girl experienced a joyful moment. She pulled a letter from the bag and read aloud the name on the envelope: “Miss Sallie Dickinson.”
“Why,” gasped Sallie, pink with surprise and delight. “That’s for me—from Henrietta.”
Henrietta had expected to return within three weeks. But did she? Not a bit of it. She and her delightful grandmother, Mrs. Slater, were having too good a time visiting their relatives in England to be willing to return at once to America. They were shopping in London.
“And oh, such shops as there are in London!” wrote Henrietta. “And oh, such funny English as I hear! My cousins took me to something they called a ‘Cinema’—and what do you think it was? Just a movie. When I come back I’ll talk some real English for you so you can see what it’s like.”
“I guess,” laughed Jean, “Henrietta is more American now than she is English.”