He accompanied her to the station and put her aboard her train, making himself very entertaining on the way by recounting interesting incidents connected with his life and travels in the East.
"You're sure you're a bona-fide uncle and no vanishing 'genie'?" she half jestingly, half wistfully remarked as the warning "All aboard!" sounded and she gave him her hand at parting.
"I'm sure of the relationship, and I think I am of too substantial proportions to become invisible to mortal eyes at a moment's warning. Whether I shall be obliged to vanish in any other way will depend upon yourself later on," Mr. Arnold smilingly replied, as he courteously lifted his hat and bowed himself away.
But during the ride home it seemed too wonderful to be true. She had dreamed of a similar revelation so many times, only to awake in the morning and find herself plain Jennie Wild, the same stray waif still hopelessly bemoaning the mystery that enshrouded her origin, that she could hardly believe she was not dreaming now.
"Mildred Arnold Jennison! Mildred Arnold Jennison!" she repeated over and over. "I don't know her; I can hardly believe she really exists; it seems more like one of the many vagaries of 'Wild Jennie' who was ever fond of imagining herself some poor little princess in disguise."
And thus, by the time she reached home, she had worked herself to the highest pitch of nervous excitement, which culminated in Katherine's arms, and which she was patiently trying to overcome when we left them to take our "backward glance."
CHAPTER XXVI.
CONCLUSION.
By the time Jennie had given Katherine a brief outline of what had occurred during the afternoon, the dinner bell sounded and warned them that they must put aside romance and startling revelations for the present and come down to the more practical and prosaic affairs of life.
"But, Katherine, I can't go down," Jennie exclaimed as she sprang to the mirror and saw her red and swollen eyes. "I look a perfect fright."