Mrs. Silburn looked up in surprise at hearing Vieve speak in this way, for school was a pleasure to her, not a labor. She saw that the light-hearted girl was in a great state of excitement, though she tried hard to suppress it, and the look was the last straw that brought on the storm.
“Oh, mamma!” she sobbed, with one arm across her eyes. “I believe that man—that man—in New Zealand—is my father!”
With another burst of tears she threw her arms around her mother’s neck and sobbed till the chair shook. And as such things are always contagious, Mrs. Silburn was soon crying too; and if tears are a relief, they must have felt much better, for it was ten or fifteen minutes before they were able to look at the letter again.
“Suppose it is your father,” Mrs. Silburn said at length, in a mildly chiding tone; “that’s nothing to cry about, is it? This unsatisfactory letter only makes another delay, that’s all. Kit will know what to do when he comes. He always knows. What is it the man says about your father’s teeth?”
“Well, he don’t say they’re father’s teeth,” she answered, trying to laugh off the remnants of her tears. “But he says that that man’s teeth—let me see what he does say—” and she turned to the letter again.
“‘The teeth almost answer the description you give,’” she read, “‘being perfect except that one incisor—’ what’s an incisor? oh, yes, I know; ‘that one incisor on the left side is partly broken off.’”
“Now isn’t that a good point?” she asked. “There ain’t many people have teeth like father’s, I tell you. And it’s nothing that one of them should be broken. I guess if we went through such a shipwreck we’d have more broken than one tooth. It’s easy to see how a mast, or a keel, or a—a—a breakwater or something might have struck him while he was in the water.
“Then there’s that scar,” she went on. “Let me see—” and she found that part of the letter again. “‘We imagine that there is a slight scar upon the left temple,’” she read. “Now why should they imagine it if it wasn’t there? You don’t imagine a scar; you see it. Oh, we couldn’t ask for anything better than that.”
There was no school for Vieve that morning; she was too much excited over the letter. But after it had been read again and well studied she drew her father’s armchair to his favorite place by the fireside, got out his slippers and stood them in order in front of the chair, just ready to be stepped into, and laid in the chair his pocket knife, that had been one of their treasures ever since Kit brought it home from London. Then she called in Turk and made him sit down beside the chair.
“There!” she said; “there’s a beginning. We have the chair, the slippers, the knife, and Turk waiting to be petted. And in New Zealand we have got as far as father’s beautiful teeth and the scar on the temple. Before long we’ll have a whole father sitting here with us, or I’m very much mistaken. I don’t feel so much as if he was missing now. We know where he is (at least I think we do), and we have only to get him home.”