Looking up the long lines of pens, I could see Miss Blair steering Drinkwater from the gangway toward the letter D. I noticed his movements as reluctant and terrified. The din I found appalling even with the faculty of sight must have been menacing to him in his darkness. He was still trying to take it with a laugh, but the merriment had become frozen.
Seizing my two bags again, I ran up the line.
"Oh, you dear old kid!" Miss Blair exclaimed, as I came within speaking distance, "I'm sure glad to see you. I was afraid you'd been—"
Knowing her suspicion, I cut in on her fear. "No; it didn't happen. I—got off the boat all right. I—I've just been looking after my things and ran back to see if there was anything I could do—"
"Bless you! There's everything you can do. Harry's been crying for you like a baby for its nurse."
"Where is he?"
The words were his. Confused by the hub-bub, he was clawing in the wrong direction, so that the grab with which he seized me was like that of a strayed child on clutching a friendly hand.
In the end I was in a taxicab, bound for the rooming-house "rather far west" in Thirty-fifth Street, with my charge by my side.
"Say, isn't this the grandest!"
The accent was so sincere that I laughed. We were out in the sunlight by this time, plowing our way through the squalor.