The Little Colonel's Holidays Part 15

Meanwhile Allison, Kitty, and the Little Colonel, who had gone ahead in the carriage with the boys, had stopped at Klein's for a box of candy, and at a book store for a dissected game they had been discussing at the luncheon. When they reached Mrs. Walton's, Malcolm sent the carriage home, and both the boys went into the house with the girls.

"Tell mamma we'll come up-stairs in a few minutes and tell her all about the carnival," said Allison to the maid who opened the door.

The five children went into the library with their candy and game, and Mrs. Walton, busy with many letters, did not notice how Allison's few minutes lengthened out, until it grew so dark that she had to lay down her pen. As she did so, a carriage drove rapidly up to the house, Mrs.

Moore hurried up the steps, and there was a hasty dialogue at the door between her and Allison.

Mrs. Walton did not hear the frightened cry, "Oh, mamma! Elise is lost!"

that went up from Allison. And impetuous Kitty, hearing no answer, and feeling that she must summon help in some way, began beating madly on the bells of Luzon, as if she were trying to call out the whole fire department.

As the clangour startled her, Mrs. Walton's first thought was that the house must be on fire, and she hurried out to the head of the stairs and looked over the bannister. Kitty was still beating on the bells with an umbrella that she had s.n.a.t.c.hed from the rack.

"Stop, Kitty!" she called. "Tell me what is the matter?"

"Elise is lost!" repeated Allison, and Mrs. Walton, with a white face, hurried down to hear Mrs. Moore's explanation.

She had been detained some time in the tenement-house, listening to the tale of woe that the sick baby's mother poured out to her; but she had felt no uneasiness about Elise, knowing that the foot-stove in the carriage would keep her warm and comfortable. When she came down, to her utter amazement the carriage door stood open, and the child was gone.

The sleepy coachman, who roused himself from his cold doze when he heard her coming, was as surprised as she, and declared he had not heard the carriage door open or the child slip out. He had no idea what could have become of her. They made inquiries of people all along the block, but n.o.body had seen a child answering to the description of Elise. Then Mrs.

Moore thought that the child must have grown tired of waiting, and for some reason had started to walk home. She had driven out to the house with the hope that she might find her there, or might overtake her on the way.

Mrs. Walton acted quickly. "Telephone to your father, Malcolm," she cried, "and to the police station. Oh, my poor baby, out in the cold streets with night coming on. I must look for her without losing a minute."

She started up the stairs to call Milly to help her dress for the search. "Get my furs," she called, "and my heaviest coat. It will be a cold night." But Malcolm stopped her.

"Don't go, Aunt Mary," he cried. "Papa is on his way here now, and we boys will go in your place. The policemen are being notified all over the city, and it will do more good for you to stay here ready to answer any questions that may come."

"I'll wait until Mr. MacIntyre comes," said Mrs. Moore, "so that I can take him straight back to that tenement district if he thinks best to go."

While they were still standing, an anxious little group in the hall, Mr.

MacIntyre came in, and after a hurried consultation he and Mrs. Moore drove in one direction, and the boys started in another.

None of them like to remember the three hours that followed. The news spread like wild-fire, and the telephone bell rang constantly with friendly messages. Each time they hoped that some one of the searching party was calling them up, but each time they were disappointed. At intervals one of the girls stole to the front door to look out into the night and listen. Every voice made them start, every footstep. Every roll of carriage wheels along the avenue made them hold their breath in suspense until it had pa.s.sed.

Presently, Kitty, leaving her mother at the telephone, and Allison and Lloyd on the stairs, strolled down to the kitchen, where Milly and the cook were talking about Charlie Ross and all the children they had ever heard of who had mysteriously disappeared from home.

"An' it's just the loikes av her they'd be afther taking," said the cook, wiping her eyes. "She was that pretty wid her long currls, an'

eyes shparklin' loike black dimonts, an' her swate little mouth wid its smile fit for a cherub. I moind the very last toime I saw her. Only this afthernoon she coom down here to show me her foine clothes she was wearin' to the parrty. There's no doubt in me moind but that somebody's stolen her on account av them same illigent clothes. Mebbe they think there'll be a big reward offered. Bless the two little pink shoes av her! It'll be a sorry day for this house if they niver coom walking into it again."

Kitty stole out of the kitchen cold with this new horror, and went back to whisper it to Allison and Lloyd, as they sat on the stairs ready to spring forward at the first sound of coming footsteps.

"Now if it had been Allison who was lost," thought Mrs. Walton, "she could have found her way home without any difficulty. She is such a sensible, womanly child, always to be trusted for doing the right thing in the right place. Kitty might not act so wisely, but she would bang ahead and come out all right in the end. She is the kind one might expect to see come home in almost any style, from a coal cart to a triumphal car. But my baby Elise is so little and so timid, my heart aches for her. She will be so sorely frightened."

Dinner was put on the table and carried out again. n.o.body could eat, and as the moments dragged by the girls still sat on the stairs, and the anxious mother sprang to the telephone at every tinkle of the bell, praying for a hopeful message from the police-station.

Elise, stumbling on down strange streets, exhausted, hungry, and cold, stopped on a street corner and looked around her. She had strayed down among the warehouses now, and the little feet, numb with cold, were too tired to go much farther. Down here few people were pa.s.sing. A big tobacco warehouse, looming up tall and dark above her, made her feel so tiny and lost, that the last bit of her courage ebbed away, and she began to sob aloud.

Out of the shadow just ahead a man was coming toward her. So tall and broad-shouldered he looked, that he seemed a giant to her terrified eyes. She put her little gloved hands over her eyes to shut out the sight, and crouched close against the wall, her baby heart fluttering like a frightened bird's.

On he came, with slow, heavy tread, his footsteps ringing through the silent street with a strange metallic echo. As he pa.s.sed out from the black shadow of the warehouse, into the light of the street-crossing, Elise peeped between her fingers again, and then smiled through her tears. It was a big, burly policeman.

The next instant she was running toward him, calling, "Oh, Mister Policeman, I'm lost! _Please_ take me home!"

It was a safe haven she had run into. The policeman had just come from home to go on his beat, and in a little cottage not many blocks away were three children who were still in his thoughts. They had followed him to the door to swarm over him and kiss him, and had called after him down the snowy street, "Good night, daddy!" The childish voices were still ringing in his ears.

As tenderly as if she had been one of his own, he lifted Elise in his strong, fatherly arms, wiped her tear-stained face, and began to question her. She told him her name, but in her confusion could not remember the name of the street where she lived.

It was the work of only a moment to carry her into a drug-store around the corner, ring up headquarters, and report his discovery, and it was only a few moments after that until they were on an electric car, homeward bound.

Elise was not the first lost child the big, tender-hearted policeman had taken home, but he had never had such a royal welcome as the one that awaited him in the hall when the joyful family met him.

He glanced around him curiously, seeing on every side the relics of victorious battle-fields, the grim weapons of warfare that stood as mute witnesses of a brave soldier's life. Beyond in the library he caught a glimpse of the portrait, the flag, and the sword, and then suddenly realised in whose presence he stood.

"Don't mention it, madam," he said, awkwardly, as the grateful mother tried to express her thanks. "Don't you know that this is about the proudest moment of my life? To know that it was _his_ little one I found, and brought back with her arms around my neck! I read everything there was about him in the papers (he nodded toward the portrait), and I always did say he was exactly my idea of a hero. But I never thought the day would come when I'd stand in his house and see all the things he touched and looked at."

"That's the way everybody seems to feel about the general," thought the Little Colonel, glancing from the blue-coated policeman to the portrait.

"It's grand to be a hero."

Elise was too tired and sleepy to talk about her adventures that night, and asked to be put to bed as soon as she had had the bowl of oyster soup that was being kept hot for her. When the cook brought it in, loudly blessing all the saints in the calendar that the child had been found, all the family remembered that they were hungry and the long delayed dinner was brought on again.

Elise fell asleep at the table before she finished the soup, but she opened her drowsy eyes as they were carrying her away to bed to say, "You all won't feel very bad, will you, if I give you just a teenty weenty Christmas present this year? 'Cause I want to save most of my money to buy something nice for that big policeman that brought me home.

Being found is the very best thing in all the world, and I would have been lost yet, if it hadn't been for him."

CHAPTER XIV.

LLOYD MAKES A DISCOVERY.

"IT _was_ Molly's little lost sister, I'm sure of it!" insisted Elise next morning, stopping in the middle of her dressing to argue the matter with Lloyd and Allison. "Of course I couldn't see her face, for she had her ap.r.o.n up over it, crying. But neither can you see the little girl's face in the picture, Allison Walton, and the rest of her was exactly like the picture. See?"

She ran across the room for the magazine that had been brought up from the library on the night of Thanksgiving, and which still lay open on the table.

"They have the same thin little arms and ragged clothes and everything.

Oh, I am sure it was Dot that I ran after, and now that I know how awful it is to be lost, I'd do anything to find her. I dreamed about her last night, and I can't think about anybody else."

So positive was she, that Lloyd could hardly wait for ten o'clock to come, the hour that her mother had promised to call for her. They were to begin their Christmas shopping that morning, for the calendar showed them that whatever gifts they intended sending Betty and Eugenia must soon be started on their way, in order to reach them in time. Lloyd was so excited over the prospect of finding Dot that she wanted to postpone the shopping, and start at once for the tenement district where Elise had wandered away from her carriage.

"I know that Betty and Eugenia would rather do without any Christmas gifts," she declared almost tearfully, "than miss this chance of finding her. Betty used to talk about it all the time, and if we don't go this morning, something may happen that we may never find her."

"But be reasonable, dear," answered Mrs. Sherman. "It would be like hunting for a needle in a hay-stack. You have such a slight clue, Lloyd.

That picture is _not_ a picture of Molly's sister. It is only one that reminded Molly of her, and there are thousands of poor little waifs in the world that look like that. I will see the Humane Society about her, and the teachers of the free kindergarten who work in that district, and we will report the case to the police. It would be useless for us to go wandering aimlessly around, up one flight of dirty stairs and down another."

Lloyd had to be content with that, but all the time she was going around among the shops, trying to choose gifts appropriate to send across the sea, she kept thinking of Molly as she had seen her that rainy day, lying face downward on her cot and sobbing out her misery in the little attic room of the Cuckoo's Nest.

They went back to Mrs. Walton's for lunch, where Elise was still talking of her adventure of the night before.

"I wish Dot had some of this good plum-pudding," she remarked. "She looked so cold and hungry. Maybe she was crying because she didn't have anything to eat."