"We are on the track, too," wrote Eugenia to Betty, some time after. "Miss Gray and I are playing private detective on the trail of little Dot. We haven't found any trace of her yet, but we're haunting all sorts of places where we think there is any prospect of coming across her. We have found plenty of other children who need help, and papa gave me a big check last night to use for a little cripple that we became interested in. Miss Gray is lovely. We've been to several things together, a matinee and a concert and an art exhibition. I showed her my ring the day she was here to lunch, and told her all about the time when you were blind and what you said to me about the Road of the Loving Heart. And she said, 'Tell that blessed little Betty that she has given me an inspiration for life. Instead of thinking of my own loneliness I shall begin to think more of other people's and to leave a memory behind me, too, as enduring as Tusitala's.'"
One other person took the trouble to hunt up an old file of papers, and find the picture like the one pinned on Molly's wall. That was Mrs. Sherman. The morning that Lloyd's letter came, she happened to be passing the city library, and went in to ask for it. The sight of the poor little creature haunted her all morning, and remembering Molly's sullen face, she longed to do something to give it a happier expression. That afternoon she went down to an art store to choose a picture for Lloyd to hang in Molly's room beside the pitiful little newspaper clipping. It was a picture of the Good Shepherd, carrying in his arms a little stray lamb that had wandered away from the shelter of the sheepfold.
CHAPTER IX.
LEFT BEHIND.
Every evening for a week, at the Cuckoo's Nest, a fire had been kindled on the sitting-room hearth, for the autumn rains made the nights chilly. Here until half-past eight the boys could play any game they chose. Hop-scotch left chalk marks on the new rag carpet, and tag upset the furniture as if a cyclone had swept through the room, but never a word of reproof interrupted their sport, no matter how boisterous. Lloyd wondered sometimes that the roof did not tumble in around their ears when she and Betty and Molly joined the five boys in a game of blind man's buff.
"It is nice to have old furniture and stout rag carpets," she confided to Betty, in a breathless pause of the game. "We couldn't romp in the house this way at Locust. I like the place now, it doesn't seem a bit queah. I wouldn't care if mothah would write for us to stay heah anothah week."
But the summons to leave came next day. A howl went up from all the little Appletons as the letter was read aloud. It had been the most exciting week of their lives, for Betty and the Little Colonel were on the friendliest terms with Molly, and the three together introduced new games into the Cuckoo's Nest with an enthusiasm that made the evening playtime a delight. The charades and tableaux and private theatricals were something to enjoy with keen zest at the moment, and dream of for weeks afterward.