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 passed.
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. Nobody 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 passing. 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.