Elise fell asleep at the table before she finished the soup, but she opened her drowsy eyes as they were carrying her away to bed to say, "You all won't feel very bad, will you, if I give you just a teenty weenty Christmas present this year? 'Cause I want to save most of my money to buy something nice for that big policeman that brought me home. Being found is the very best thing in all the world, and I would have been lost yet, if it hadn't been for him."
CHAPTER XIV.
LLOYD MAKES A DISCOVERY.
"It was Molly's little lost sister, I'm sure of it!" insisted Elise next morning, stopping in the middle of her dressing to argue the matter with Lloyd and Allison. "Of course I couldn't see her face, for she had her apron up over it, crying. But neither can you see the little girl's face in the picture, Allison Walton, and the rest of her was exactly like the picture. See?"
She ran across the room for the magazine that had been brought up from the library on the night of Thanksgiving, and which still lay open on the table.
"They have the same thin little arms and ragged clothes and everything. Oh, I am sure it was Dot that I ran after, and now that I know how awful it is to be lost, I'd do anything to find her. I dreamed about her last night, and I can't think about anybody else."
So positive was she, that Lloyd could hardly wait for ten o'clock to come, the hour that her mother had promised to call for her. They were to begin their Christmas shopping that morning, for the calendar showed them that whatever gifts they intended sending Betty and Eugenia must soon be started on their way, in order to reach them in time. Lloyd was so excited over the prospect of finding Dot that she wanted to postpone the shopping, and start at once for the tenement district where Elise had wandered away from her carriage.
"I know that Betty and Eugenia would rather do without any Christmas gifts," she declared almost tearfully, "than miss this chance of finding her. Betty used to talk about it all the time, and if we don't go this morning, something may happen that we may never find her."