But the suggestion of being “selected” jarred upon Sidney’s sensitiveness. Where had her parents found her? There was one possibility that she had not considered, and that brightened her when she thought of it. It might be that she was related after all, a child of some relative.
Sidney had now come to the point where she felt that she must know. That night she wrote to her father, telling him of her visit to the deposit box and its results. She addressed the letter to his office, but she said that if it was his judgment to show her mother the letter, she was ready for her to know. “It was a great shock,” she wrote, “but I am trying to be sensible about it. I dread and yet I want to know the rest.”
She sent the letter by special delivery the next morning. That night she received a telegram from her father to the effect that he was driving up to see her on the following day. Sidney’s heart was comforted by the prompt response, though she could scarcely suppress her excitement. She did not tell Shirley, could not, for some reason. The girls in her suite knew of her telegram, but it was nothing new for Mr. Thorne to telegraph his movements.
It was just after lunch when Sidney saw her father’s car coming around the drive. She had been staying near the main building except during recitation hours and now, with several of the girls, she was out upon the campus near by. She ran toward the drive, waving, and stood till the car reached her. Her father was alone, driving the car himself. How fine he was, and how kind!
Mr. Thorne reached out from the car and took Sidney’s outstretched hand, patting it and looking searchingly into the earnest brown eyes that were raised to his. “So that was what was the matter, childie,” he said. “Run in and ask permission to be carried off. We’ll get away from the school to talk. I will drive up to let any investigating authorities know that it is your father who wants you.”
“Good. Shall I change to a dress?”
“Yes. Take off your uniform and bring a coat and hat. We shall have dinner somewhere, probably, and then I will bring you back. Will you miss any recitations?”
“One, but I can fix that.”
It was on the lake shore, below a sandy bluff, with their car parked above, that Mr. Thorne and his daughter sat down to have their talk. The fresh air was exhilarating. There was movement in the waves and in the flight of birds, around them and out above the waters; but there was not a soul on the beach to overhear or distract.
Before this they had talked about unimportant things, and Mr. Thorne had said that he had not yet mentioned the matter to her mother. Now he began by reminding her, as Shirley had, that all this had been known to them and that their love for her had only grown with the years. “You belong to us, Sidney. You are our own child by adoption and in every way you have grown into our hearts. Your mother was wondering only the other day how she would bear to have you grow up, come out into society and leave her, very likely, to marry some one,—as she did herself. ‘It’s a little too near,’ she said. Now can you realize that this is all true?”