These girls had planned to share their island friend and many were the surprises they had in store for her, but when they realized how much it meant to Rilla to go to the little fishing village that she called home, they did not let her know of the plans they had made for her pleasure, nor need they be entirely abandoned, merely postponed.
“How I do wish you could both come down to Tunkett for a week-end while I am there,” Muriel exclaimed one day when Joy and Faith had dropped into her cupola room for a moment.
“Is there a hotel in the town?” Joy asked eagerly.
How Rilla laughed. “Nothing like the one to which Miss Widdemere took us last week when we were in New York,” she said. “However there is an inn very like the one about which you were reading, Faith, in that magazine story. In fact, the fishing village might almost have been Tunkett, I do believe. Perhaps all New England coast towns are much alike.”
“That settles it,” Faith declared. “I’ve always wanted to really see with my own eyes a village like the one in that story, haven’t you, Joy?”
Their Dresden China girl laughingly agreed that the one desire of her life was to visit just such a place, and that, if all went well, they would surprise Muriel by appearing at the inn in Tunkett for at least one week-end of the vacation which was but a fortnight away.
“Oh, what jolly fun that will be,” Rilla exclaimed. “Girls, I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me during the Christmas holidays. I feel it, though I can’t tell what it is to be.”
“I sincerely hope so,” Faith said. Then, after a hesitating moment, she asked: “Dear, have you ever wished that you might know who your own father is?”
Muriel’s face grew suddenly pale and there were tears in her eyes.
“Why should I want him,” she said slowly and in a voice quivering with emotion, “since he did not care for me?”
Faith’s arms were about her. “Dear, dear girl,” she said, “do forgive me for having spoken of your father. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand.”
“Nor do I understand.” Muriel smiled through her tears as she held out a hand to her other dearest friend, who stood silently near, her sweet face expressing tender sympathy. “I know nothing whatever about my father. If Grand-dad knew about him, he never told me. He had promised to tell me all about my girl-mother’s marriage when I was eighteen years of age. I am nearly that now, but Grand-dad is not here. I do not believe that anyone else knows. I have often wanted to ask Uncle Barney, but since Grand-dad died I haven’t seemed to care. I have felt that if my own father could desert his baby girl, surely he would not want her when she was grown.”