Here she pledged the necklace for two dollars, with which she bought, at the next groggery, a half gallon of uncommonly poisonous whisky, even as whisky goes, and then she went back to her den with joyful anticipations to lock herself in and have what she called “a glorious drunk” all to herself.
Meanwhile Owlet, hidden under the front steps of that tall house, waited fearlessly and patiently, without the slightest idea that she had been left to her fate.
But now the change in her clothing, which in her intense interest in the prospect of getting home to “Lady’s house” she had scarcely noticed before, began to trouble her. It irritated her skin and offended her nose. Still the foul envelope did not suggest foul play to the unsuspicious child.
“It must have rained while I was gone dead,” she said to herself, “and that poor, ragged woman took off my wet clothes and hung them up to dry, and wrapped me in her poor old shawl. It was all she had, too, poor thing. And it was very good of her. Still, I do wish she hadn’t. I would rather be soaked to the skin than be so very, very nasty.”
Just then a policeman passed on his beat. Owlet saw him on the lighted sidewalk, but she did not know him for a policeman, and he did not see her, all in the deep shadow of the stoop.
Still she waited patiently, almost stupidly. It was strange that she felt no fear, for she did not; strange, also, that she was growing indifferent, almost unconscious of her noisome change of clothes, for she was. She was becoming dazed and stupefied by her present state and by all that she had gone through since her flight, and even before she was driven to that flight which was so desperate a venture for a child only six years old.
Sometimes she dozed and started, waked up suddenly, and tried to gather her scattered thoughts, and wondered why it took so long a time for her new friend to fetch Puck.
“Oh, I reckon they have gone on to the house to tell Lady I am found, and to fetch the carriage to take me home, for, after all, the house must be a good way off from here for me to walk, or for Puck to carry me. And Lady will come herself, I know.”
With this thought in her mind, the weary child sank to sleep, and dreamed of being in “Lady’s” garden of delight, among the glorious flowers, or down the gooseberry walk, or beside the coop where the bantam “chickies” ran in and out, with Ducky Darling cooing to them. So passed the hours of that April night.