“I don’t believe anything in the world could take me from you all but just my father,” she said.
“I’ll prophesy that you’ll see us soon,” Miss Gordon said briskly, for she knew the tears were near. Luckily the whistle of the boat at that moment warned the friends that they must go ashore, but they stood on the dock and waved until the small craft was out of sight.
Then it was that Muriel recalled a letter that Miss Widdemere had given her at the last moment. Taking it from her coat pocket, she saw that it was from Gene, who was again in London.
CHAPTER XLII.
MURIEL MEETS HER FATHER.
To the surprised delight of Muriel, both Uncle Barney and little Zoeth were at the boat to bid her goodbye. Doctor Winslow had at once wired the good news to the old man who had been instrumental in finding the girl’s long-lost father and his deeply furrowed, weather-beaten face shone with joy as he held out his arms to Rilla, heeding not at all the jostling throng of voyagers who were eager to board the greater steamer.
“Who is your pa, Rilly gal? What’d the lawyer chap tell yo’ about him?” Muriel shook her head. “I don’t know a bit more about it than you do, Uncle Barney,” she confessed. “My father wished me to form my own opinion when I met him, and so he asked Mr. Templeton to make no attempt to describe him to me. I’m glad really. One never can picture people as they truly are. All that matters to me is that he is my father.”
Then Doctor Lem returned, having attended to the baggage, and they all accompanied Rilla to her stateroom. “Take good care of Shags for me,” were her last words to Zoeth, “and tell him I’ll come back after him as soon as ever I can.”
Then Muriel leaned over the rail and waved to her loved ones on the crowded wharf until the huge steamer had swung out into the channel.
The voyage, although of great interest to the girl, who so loved the sea, was uneventful, and in due time England was reached.
“And so this is London,” Muriel said one foggy morning as she glanced out of the window of the conveyance which Mr. Templeton had engaged to take them to their destination. “I am so glad that my father does not live in the city.” Then she inquired: “Is he a farmer, Mr. Templeton?” Rilla recalled that when in Tunkett the young man had seemed to be very poor, but he might have sold paintings enough since then to have bought a farm.