"'Did you run away?' said the policeman.
"'No,' said Harry, and his eyes blazed with indignation, 'I'm minding mamma; she told me to show Nannie every thing, and Nannie wanted to see a steamboat, and I'm finding one for her now!'
"At this the policeman laughed, and then he looked so kindly at the children, that I suspect he had a dozen children of his own at his house, and that made him love every other little child. Why, bless your dear little heart, I love all the little children in the whole world, because I love you so dearly.
THE STEAMBOAT HARRY AND EMMA WERE LOOKING FOR.
"Then the policeman said—'Well, Harry, you are a long way from home; and I think you had better put off the steamboat-hunting business till some other day. Your mother may think you and Nannie are a little too young to travel about the world by yourselves. Come; I will go back with you.'
"It was very fortunate he did, for though Harry knew very well what street he lived in, he did not know how to get to it; and it would have been a sad thing for the dear little creatures if they had been lost. But now the good policeman took Nannie in his arms, because she was getting very tired, and Harry by the hand, and they all got into a railroad car, and before long were at the house.
"But oh! what a distracted house! For when Nannie's mother had finished the wonderful secret, and wanted to leave, the children were not to be found. They searched the house; they examined the bath-tubs and wash-tubs; they went out into the garden and down into the cellar, but they were not to be found; and then the weeping, terrified mothers went out into the street, and asked everybody they met, if they had seen the children.
"The waiter, who was just setting the table for dinner, rushed round the corner, brandishing the carving-knife like a pistol, and frightened a fashionable young gentleman out of all his five wits, for he thought it was a crazy man, trying to kill him; and when he turned round he was scared again, for there was the laundress, who had started out with a wet shirt in her hands, which she was just starching; there she was, waving it about in the wind, like a flag of distress, and crying as hard as she could.