"She's not there!" He ran to the hall door, calling as before.
"She's gone?" Sue went the opposite way, to look from the rear back-parlor window that commanded a small square of yard.
Mrs. Milo ceased to weep.
"Laura! Laura!" Farvel called up the stairs.
"Hello-o-o-o!" sang back Tottie.
"Laura! Laura!" Now Farvel was on the steps outside. He descended to the sidewalk, turned homeward, halted, reconsidering, then hurried the opposite way.
CHAPTER VIII
Hat in hand, and on tiptoe, Clare slipped from her room to the hall, and down the stairs leading to the service-entrance beneath the front steps. Her coat was over an arm, and a Japanese wrist-bag hung beside it. As noiselessly as possible, she let herself out. Then bareheaded still, but not too hurriedly, and forcing a pleasant, unconcerned expression, she turned away from the brownstone house—going toward the Rectory.
Across the street, waiting under steps that offered him the right concealment, a man was loitering. In the last hour he had seen a number of people enter Tottie's, and five had left—the child and Mrs. Colter, a fat man and a slim, and a quaint-looking girl with her hair in pig-tails. He had stayed on till Clare came out; then as she fled, but without a single look back, he prepared to follow.
But he did not forsake his hiding-place until she had turned the first corner. Then he raced forward, peered around the corner cautiously, located her by the bobbing of her yellow head among other heads all hatted, and fell in behind her at a discreet distance.