“Well, really, Miss Muriel, I’ve never had much time to read verse; been too busy studying law. But your farmer-father sets quite a store by the poets, he tells me.”
“I’m so glad!” was the radiant reply. Then the girl fell to musing. How she hoped that her dear mother knew that at last she was going to the poor artist whom she had so loved.
“How long will it be before we reach the farming district, Mr. Templeton?” The girl was again gazing out of the window at her side. “These homes that we are passing are like the great old castles I have read about in Scott’s books and Thackeray’s.”
“We will soon reach our destination,” was the non-committal reply of her companion. Then, leaning forward, he spoke a few words to the man at the wheel.
They turned down a side road that narrowed to a winding lane. There the conveyance stopped and Mr. Templeton directed Muriel to a picturesque cabin half hidden among trees, in front of which ran a shallow babbling stream. “Your father awaits you in there,” he said.
As one in a dream Muriel crossed the rustic bridge and approached the cabin. It was just the sort of a home that an artist would build, she thought.
Timidly she knocked on the closed door. It was flung open by a man nearing middle age, perhaps, but whose youthful face was radiant with a great joy. Taking both her hands, he gazed at her devouringly. Then, drawing her to him, he crushed her in his arms as he said, his voice tense with emotion: “My Rilla’s own little girl, and my girl, too.”
It was June, one year since Muriel Storm had arrived in England, and again she was returning to the home of her ancestors, after a long trip to Switzerland, where Gene had visited her and her father. During this year, Muriel had acquired from her father an ease of manner which well fitted her for the position she was to fill.
Invitations to the debut of Lady Muriel were crossing the Atlantic. They were addressed to the four girls at High Cliffs who had befriended her when she was supposed to be only the grand-daughter of a lighthouse-keeper. Others bearing the Wainwater crest were addressed to dwellers in Tunkett—to Doctor Winslow and his lovely wife; to Brazilla Mullet and her brother, Jabez Mullet; to Uncle Barney and his Molly.