Once Tom Curtis did turn his head. He had heard an unusual stir behind him. The sailors, who were lined up preparatory to going ashore, had given the houseboat party a rousing cheer as they left the ship. But even with this chance for discovering his friends, Tom was blind. The crowd hid the little party of women from view, and Tom strode on faster than ever up the river bank toward one of the narrow streets of the town.
"O Miss Jenny Ann!" pleaded Madge as soon as her feet touched land, "I saw Tom Curtis leave the pier just a second ago. He can't be very far away. Won't you let me run after him? I will find him and bring him back in a minute."
Without waiting to hear her chaperon's reply Madge darted up the street at full speed.
Run as hard as she would, Madge could not catch up with Tom. Every time she arrived at one end of a street Tom was about in the act of crossing over to the next one. She could keep him in sight, but she could not reach him. She forgot that Miss Jenny Ann and the rest of her party were waiting for her, and that she really ought to have given up her chase, remembered nothing but the fact that she must see Tom. As she plunged recklessly across a side street, an automobile whirled into it.
At the opposite end of the square Tom Curtis's attention was arrested sharply. He heard the shrill, harsh protest from an automobile horn, then a cry of terror from a girl's throat. Her cry was taken up by half a dozen voices. There was no need to ask questions. He knew what had happened. An automobile had run down a young girl.
It took but a minute for Tom to run back the entire length of the block. But before he got to the spot where the accident had occurred a crowd had risen up as though by magic. It was impossible to see at once who had been hurt. Tom pushed his way through the outer fringe of the crowd. There was a woman in tears, offering her bottle of smelling salts to a girl. A flushed man was bending over the same girl, entreating her forgiveness. A fat policeman was demanding everybody's name.
Tom heard the girl say: "I am not hurt a bit, thank you. I was frightened; that was why I screamed. The front of your car just grazed me, but you stopped it in time. No, policeman, I don't wish to have anybody arrested. Please let me go. I was trying to catch up with a friend. He will be out of sight if I don't hurry."
And it was thus that Tom beheld Madge, whom, a minute before, in his gloomy reverie, he had given up for lost!
"O Tom!" she cried joyously as he hurried toward her, "I did make you look around, after all. We were not drowned. Aren't you glad to see me?"
Tom held Madge's small brown hands in his. "Madge!" was all he found words for.