“Mounted upon the back of the largest and realest looking horse.”
Down Winter Street to Washington, in the great, sweeping crowd of men, women and children; past the gorgeous dry goods stores; past candy and apple stands; past all sorts of strange and funny and bewildering things, Charlie was slowly dragged, a helpless and unwilling prisoner. He only broke silence once. Passing a window filled with braids and chignons, and doubtless taking them for scalps, he inquired with considerable interest if “Indians kept store there.”
“Oh! what a lovely silk!” ejaculated Aunt Mary’s friend, coming to a sudden stop before one of the great dry goods emporiums on Washington Street.
Aunt Mary stopped, too. The pattern was too gorgeous to be lightly passed. She raised her hand to remove her vail, forgot her charge for a moment, and when she looked again Charlie had disappeared.
“Charlie! Charlie! Why, where is he?” she exclaimed, pale with fright. “I thought you had hold of him!”
“I dropped his hand not a minute ago, to be sure my pocket hadn’t been picked. I thought you would look out for him.”
In vain they searched; in vain they questioned clerks and policemen and apple-women. Nobody had seen such a boy, and yet everybody seemed to think that they certainly should remember if they had. It was now half past four. And Tom, who might have helped them so much, was gone!
“Perhaps,” suggested a pitying apothecary’s clerk, with a very small moustache and very smooth hair, “perhaps the young man Tom has taken him home.”
There was a small spark of comfort in this suggestion and, though unbelieving, the two hurried homewards, only to find Tom sitting on the doorstep, lazily fanning himself, and hear his surprised ejaculation:
“Why! what have you done with Charlie?”