Upon leaving the reception room Muriel had gone at once in search of her best friends and had found them all in Joy’s room.
“We’ve been hunting for you everywhere,” Faith said. “We wanted you to make a fourth on the courts, but you were nowhere about, so we had to play alone.”
Then the speaker paused and gazed intently at the morning glow in the face of her friend. “Why, Muriel,” she exclaimed, “of late you have seemed troubled, but now you are radiant. Tell us what has happened.”
Although every moment was needed for preparing for departure, Muriel paused long enough to tell these, her dearest friends, that at last her own father had been found.
“Rilla, it’s like a chapter in a story-book, isn’t it?” Joy exclaimed. “Don’t you feel strange and unreal?”
Muriel laughed. “I suppose that I do, but girls, I haven’t time now to feel anything, for I must pack and be ready to leave for New York on the evening boat. Uncle Lem is going to keep me at the hospital tonight, and I am to meet my escort at Hoboken tomorrow morning before daybreak.”
It had been a whirl of a day and when at last came the hour for parting with Miss Gordon and the girls who had been such loyal friends, Muriel suddenly realized that, though she was to gain much, she also was losing much.
“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.
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.