At last, in the dusk, the little group appeared at the church-door, and she exclaimed, "What has kept you so, Mr. Fleet?"
He determined to put the best face on the situation, and indulge in no heroics, so he said, "You could not expect such a body of infantry as this to march rapidly."
"What!" she exclaimed, "have you brought all the lost children in the city back with you?"
"No, only those that fell properly to my care;" and in a few words he told their story.
"And do you, without a cent in the world, mean to assume the burden of these four children?" she asked, in accents of surprise.
He could not see her face, but his heart sank within him, for he thought that to her it would seem quixotic and become another barrier between them; but he answered, firmly: "Yes, till God, who has imposed the burden, removes it, and enables me to place them among friends in a good home. Mrs. Bruder, before she died, wrote to her family in Germany, telling her whole story. Relatives may take the children; if not, some way will be provided."
"Mr. Fleet, I wonder at you," was her answer. "Give me that child, and you bring the others."
He wondered at her as he saw her take the child and imprint a kiss on the sleepy, dirty face; and Ernst, who had been eying her askance, crept timidly nearer when he saw the kiss, and whispered, "Perhaps her old outside heart has been burned away."
They followed to a lobby of the lecture-room, and here she procured a damp towel and proceeded to remove the tear and dust stains from the round and wondering faces of the children. Having restored them to something of their original color, she took them away to supper, saying to Dennis, with a decided nod, "You stay here till I come for you."
Something in her manner reminded him of the same little autocrat who had ordered him about when they arranged the store together. She soon returned with a basin of water and a towel, saying: "See what a luxury you secure by obeying orders. Now give an account of yourself, as every lady's knight should on his return. How have you spent the day?"