“It isn’t a letter. It says, ’Uncle come to Olive,’ only those four words, nothing else, and just look, scratched with a bit of burnt stick on a piece of newspaper! Oh, think of it! Where can she be? Why didn’t she write before if she was in trouble? What has happened?”
“Perhaps it is a hoax,” said Madame between her drawn white lips.
“There hain’t in this world a bein’ so lost to all feelin’ as would make a joke o’ our sorrow,” said Uncle David. “No, Ezra, that’s writ by our little gal. We must go to her. Come ’long, brother.” He put on his hat and started cheerfully for the door.
“Where are you going?” asked Madame, in a muffled voice.
“I’m agoin’ to little Ollie.”
“Where is she, do you know?”
“Ezry, don’t you know where we’ve got to go to?”
“I know nothing, except that this scrap of paper has been brought by a negro boy.”
Ezra kissed the paper, and Madame’s lips curled in contempt.
“Is it not rather a wild-goose chase to start you know not whither, and at this time of the evening too?”