“I used to think I liked to get letters,” said Henrietta, walking up and down the long veranda, arm in arm with Hazel Benton and Jean, “but now I don’t. My sweet old grandmother doesn’t say much but I can see that she’s worried to death because she doesn’t hear from my father—she always asks if I’ve heard. We haven’t either of us had a word since last June. Of course, often it is two or three months between letters because he gets into such unget-at-able places; and when there, gets so interested in what he is doing that he doesn’t realize how the time is getting away, and quite often there are no postoffices that he can possibly reach. But he does try to write often enough to keep us from worrying. Then there are some people in England who look after his money and other business matters for him. Well, grandmother says they haven’t heard from him; and she thought perhaps I’d brought my last letter from him with me—it had the name of a place that he might have gone to in it. But I left it in Lakeville—I think I can tell her just where to look for it—in one of those lovely little boxes that he sent me from India.”
“It must be lovely,” breathed Hazel, “to get presents from India.”
“It is—when I’m getting them. But now I don’t like any of Grandmother’s letters. I just hate to open them. She’s trying not to frighten me and at the same time she’s just scaring me to pieces. I didn’t think much about it before I left home last fall, but when I didn’t get a single thing from him at Christmas time (he always sends me things for Christmas) I was sure there was something wrong. And then, of course, I began to think of all the things that might happen to a man that looks at a map and then plunges right into it, whether it’s wet or dry, the way Daddy does. And goodness! It’s a wonder there’s a man left on this earth. I can imagine such awful things. I wake up in the night and worry for hours.”
“What does your father do for a living?” asked Hazel.
“He doesn’t do anything for a living,” explained Henrietta, who for some time had been wearing a worried expression that was new to her. “He just does what he does because he’s perfectly crazy about digging up things—like tombs and buried cities and old marble statues. He’d rather find the nick that came out of a prehistoric platter than to own a brand new set of dishes.”
“He must be quite handy with a shovel by this time,” said Hazel.
“Oh, he doesn’t do the digging himself,” explained Henrietta. “He hires folks—natives mostly. They do the actual digging but he is always right there to make sure that they work carefully. Otherwise they’d smash valuable finds and that would be worse than not digging them up at all. He knows a wonderful lot about pottery and old metals and marbles and—just loads of things. He’s an archæologist.”
“No wonder you were able to spell the whole school down on that word, yesterday,” said Hazel. “It must be wonderful to have a father like that.”
“It would be,” returned Henrietta, soberly, “if he didn’t have to take such dreadful risks.”
“He has been lost several times,” comforted Jean, “and he has always turned up again all right.”
“Yes, but once he was sick and almost died of a horrible fever; and another time some Arabs robbed him and kept him for three months in a perfectly dreadful prison, and another time his guides got frightened and deserted him and he had to buy himself back from the folks that captured him.”
“No wonder you can tell us stories on the front stairs,” exclaimed Hazel. “But isn’t there any way to search for him?”
“Well, there’s this about it. If Mr. Henshaw, in London, gets really worried, he’ll send a relief expedition to hunt him up. They did it once before.”
“Well,” said Hazel, “I hope they’ll find him. And that reminds me—speaking of lost things and things that you dig up—my precious lapis lazuli beads are gone. I wore them to church two Sundays ago; and I know I put them back in their case, in my bureau drawer. When I opened it this morning, the case was empty. I reported it to Doctor Rhodes at once and it’s on the bulletin board right now. Those beads don’t look like so very much but they cost a young fortune. They’re good. You see, I have a daughterless aunt who gives me lovely things—except when she goes alone to pick them out as she did those pink stockings; she’s color-blind, unfortunately. Never anything useful, you know, just luxuries. Mother says Aunt Annabel hasn’t a sensible idea in her head.”
Jean laughed suddenly. Then she explained the cause of her mirth.
“I had a funny thought,” said she. “If Hazel’s aunt and Marjory’s Aunty Jane were shaken up in a bag, it might make two average aunts, mightn’t it, Henrietta? Marjory’s aunt doesn’t believe in luxuries—”
“Then,” interrupted Hazel, with an odd, searching look at Jean, “Marjory doesn’t have very many?”
“None at all,” returned Jean. “She’s really an abused child. But I’m sure her aunt thinks all the world of her.”
“Marjory was crazy about those blue beads of mine,” said Hazel. “I let her wear them once in awhile before Christmas.”
“That’s so,” said Henrietta. “You and Marjory were quite chummy for awhile, weren’t you? Why aren’t you chummy now, if a lady may ask?”
“I don’t know,” returned Hazel, evasively. “That is, I don’t care to say. We just aren’t friends.”
“If it’s anything that Gladys de Milligan has said,” offered Henrietta, “you don’t need to believe it. That girl has tried to say mean things to me about every girl in this school. She’s a wretched little beast and I detest her.”
“I don’t like her,” said Hazel, “and I don’t listen to her when I can help it, but some of the things she’s said have been true.”
“That’s the worst of Gladys,” said Jean. “She always manages to mix a little truth in with her yarns; and that makes people believe them.”
“Mercy!” whispered Henrietta, a few minutes later. “How long have Gladys and Grace been walking just behind us? How much do you suppose they heard?”