After some moments of rapturous hugs and incoherent remarks, the traveller was allowed to have some breakfast, while Mrs. Morrison and Frances looked on, too happy to eat.
"I had to surprise you, for a despatch sent after I left St. Louis would have aroused you in the night, or else not have reached you till about this time," Mr. Morrison explained as he helped himself to a muffin.
"Jack, how brown you are, and how well you look! It is a delight to see you," said his wife.
"I never was better in my life; but I can't tell you how I have wished for you and Frances."
"Next time you'll take me, won't you, father?" Frances asked.
"Yes, indeed. Wink, I believe you have grown a foot! You'll soon be a young lady, and I don't like it; people will begin to think your mother and I are elderly, when we are really in the heyday of youth."
In this irrelevant fashion conversation went on through the day. There were all the winter experiences to be related, and Frances could not rest till each person in the house had been brought in to see her father. First of all Mr. Clark ran up to say how glad he was to see the traveller back again; and on her way to school Miss Moore looked in with a merry greeting; then Emma and the General were waylaid in the hall and introduced, the former in a dreadful fit of shyness; and last, Miss Sherwin was pounced upon and dragged reluctantly into the sitting room.
To her Mr. Morrison's return meant the breaking up of the pleasant companionship of the winter, and she was not in the least glad to see him. Mrs. Morrison's exclamation as she entered was somewhat disconcerting.
"Jack, I want you to know Lillian, she has been so good to me!"
"Good! I?" Miss Sherwin cried in a tone that made them all laugh, and then her hand was given a cordial grasp by a tall man with a boyish face, who said, "We shall have to take each other on sufferance, Miss Sherwin, till we can find out for ourselves how much truth there is in what our friends say of us."