The entire Alley from one end to the other was flooded with good things to eat, and with innumerable things to wear. There was not a child that did not boast a new toy, nor a sick room that did not display fruit and flowers. Even the cats and the dogs stopped their fighting, and lay full-stomached and content in the sun. No wonder the Alley rubbed its eyes and failed to recognize its own face!
The Alley received, but did not give. Nowhere was there a trace of the twins; and after a two weeks’ search, and a fruitless following of clews that were no clews at all, even Margaret was forced sorrowfully to acknowledge defeat.
On the evening before the day they had set to go home, Patty timidly said:
“I hadn’t oughter ask it, after all you’ve done; but do ye s’pose—could we mebbe jest—jest go ter Mont-Lawn fur a minute, jest ter look at it?”
“Mont-Lawn?”
“Yes. We was so happy thar, once,” went on Patty, earnestly. “You an’ me an’ the twins. I hain’t never forgot it, nor what they learnt me thar. All the good thar was in me till you come was from them. I thought mebbe if I could jest see it once ’twould make it easier ’bout the other—that we can’t find the twins ye know.”
“See it? Of course we’ll see it,” cried Margaret. “I should love to go there myself. You know I owe it—everything, too.”
It was not for home, therefore, that Margaret and Patty left New York the next morning, but for Mont-Lawn. The trip to Tarrytown and across the Hudson was soon over, as was the short drive in the fresh morning air. Almost before the two travelers realized where they were, the beautiful buildings and grounds of Mont-Lawn appeared before their eyes.
Margaret had only to tell that they, too, had once been happy little guests in the years gone by, to make their welcome a doubly cordial one; and it was not long before they were wandering about the place with eyes and ears alert for familiar sights and sounds.
In the big pavilion where their own hungry little stomachs had been filled, were now numerous other little stomachs experiencing the same delight; and in the long dormitories where their own tired little bodies had rested were the same long rows of little white beds waiting for other weary little limbs and heads. Margaret’s eyes grew moist here as she thought of that dear mother who years before had placed over just such a little bed the pictured face of her lost little girl, and of how that same little girl had seen it and had thus found the dear mother arms waiting for her.