“I don’t think you need be so frightened, mother dear,” she said. “So many things might have kept him. Perhaps the baby that the little girl said was so ill, was worse, and father thought it would be cruel to come away. Or the mother may be worse, so that he could not leave the children. Or perhaps there may be a fire somewhere, and father is stopping to see it. You know how fond father is of looking at fires.”
These solutions of the puzzle had already occurred to Mrs. Kayll, but yet they seemed more possible when suggested by someone else.
“Well, dear, it can’t do any harm for me to go and see. The worst that can happen is that your father may laugh at me for being so anxious about nothing. Come down as soon as you’re ready.”
And, thinking it safer, not to talk there any longer, she went and put on bonnet and shawl, and again took up her position at the front door.
In a few minutes Madge was at her side.
“What are you going to do first, mother?”
“I am going to find the address Amy Coleson gave us—Wingate Row—to see if he is there, and, if not, whether he has been there, and at what time he left. If he comes home, Madge, tell him how it was, and that I am sure to be in soon.”
And with these words her mother hurried away, and the girl was left to keep lonely watch, and to stifle her fears as well as she could. Fortunately for her, Madge had not such a quick imagination as her mother.