She turned on the electric light. There, in place of the odd assortment of playthings under which she had kept Bettina hidden, was a pile of white underclothing.
Something seemed almost to stop Elsa’s heart from beating as she opened one bureau drawer after another, and even hunted under the bureau, without finding her beloved doll. Suddenly she remembered hearing her grandmother say, that evening, that she had given away some old toys to the Convalescent Home children, and her own answer: “I am glad you did, grandmother.” Bettina must have been among them.
Sobbing bitterly, yet without making any sound, Elsa turned off the light and crept into bed. She felt so lonely and wretched that she could not go to sleep. After awhile, she climbed out of bed and stood in front of the row of dolls on the white couch between the windows. She chose the smallest of these dolls, the one which was most like Bettina, held her for a moment, then kissed her, put her down and crept back to bed. Much as she missed Bettina, she could not bear to take another doll in her place. Again the child fell to sobbing in an agony of loneliness.
She heard the great clock in the hall chime nine; a moment after, Cummings closed the door of her own room. When the chimes rang out the half-hour, Mrs. Danforth’s steps came up the polished front stairs, passed Elsa’s door, and Elsa heard her grandmother’s door close. Soon the house was quiet, save for the sound of heavy breathing from Cummings’s room. Cummings could be noiseless by day but not by night.
Elsa felt that she could not stay in bed another moment. She sprang out and went again to the row of dolls. Looking out of the window, she saw a shadow pass across the thin lace curtains of the Warrens’ library windows,—a shadow which she knew must be Miss Ruth’s.
A desperate hope of comfort flashed into Elsa’s mind. Without a moment’s delay, she slipped her little bare feet into her white, fur-lined bedroom shoes, put on the thick, long, white bathrobe which hung over a chair, and softly opened her door. Then with a quick-beating heart but without any thought of fear, she crept down the stairs, took a great fur cape of her grandmother’s from the hall, undid the front door latch, left the door ajar, and ran down the steps, in the faint moonlight, and across the dry grass of the lawn to the Warrens’ house.
Ruth Warren had just put out the lights in the library and was fastening back the curtains when she saw the strange little figure speeding toward her house. “Fairy or elf or child,—who is it, I wonder?” she said to herself. There was something so distressful-looking in the little hurrying figure that she did not wait for the bell to ring.
“Why, Elsa dear, what is the trouble?” she asked, drawing the child into the hall.
Elsa clung to Miss Ruth, sobbing in heart-broken fashion.
“Has anything happened to your grandmother?”