"Poor little kid!" muttered the cabman. "And to think how I used to snap my whip at 'em in the window!"
"An' how I used to bring him candy, contrary to the postal laws!" sighed the carrier. The cab driver and the postman spoke as if the dog and the child were both already dead.
The group broke slowly and sadly at last. The mother and the maids crept tearfully into the house. The professor, the carrier, the newsboy, and the president threw themselves into the matter as if they had been hunting for a lost child. The president deferred his engagement at the faculty meeting for two hours,—which gave about time for a faculty meeting to get under way. The professor and the cab driver and the police ransacked the town till nearly dawn. It began to rain, and the night grew chilly. The carrier went home, looking like a man in the shade of a public calamity. The newsboy ran around in the storm, shadowing all the negro boys he met, and whistling for Loveliness in dark places where low-bred curs answered him, and yellow mongrels snarled at his soaked heels. But the professor had the worst of it; for when he came in, drenched and tired, in the early morning, a little figure in a lace-trimmed nightgown stood at the head of the stairs, waiting for him.
The professor gave one glance at the child's face, and instinctively covered his own. He could not bear to look at her.
"Papa," said Adah, limping down the stairs, "where is Loveliness? I can't find him! Oh, I cannot find him! And nobody will tell me where he's gone to. Papa? I arxpect you to tell me 'e trufe. Where is my Loveliness?"
Her mother could not comfort or control her. She clung to her father's heart the remainder of the night; moaning at intervals, then unnaturally and piteously still. The rain dashed on the windows, for the storm increased; the child shrank and shivered.
"He's never been out in 'e rain, Papa! He will be wet—and frightened. Papa, who will give him his little baxet, and cover him up warm? Papa! Papa! who will be kind to Loveliness?"
In the broad daylight Adah fell into a short sleep. She woke with a start and a cry, and asked for the dog. "He'll come home to breakfust," she said, with quivering lip. "Tell Nora to have some sugar on his mush when he comes home."
But Loveliness did not come home to breakfast. The child refused to eat her own. She hurried down and crept to the broad window seat, to watch the street. When she saw the empty gray satin cushion, she flung herself face down with a heart-rending cry.