Later he tried private detectives, and, not content with their efforts, he followed them over the ground that they covered, searching through boarding houses, and public classes of all kinds; canvassing the editorial offices of the various magazines Eleanor had admired in the hope of discovering that she had applied for some small position there; following every clue that his imagination, and the 277 acumen of the professionals in his service, could supply;—but his patient search was unrewarded. Eleanor had apparently vanished from the surface of the earth. The quest which had seemed to him so simple a matter when he first undertook it, now began to assume terrible and abortive proportions. It was unthinkable that one little slip of a girl untraveled and inexperienced should be able permanently to elude six determined and worldly adult New Yorkers, who were prepared to tax their resources to the utmost in the effort to find her,—but the fact remained that she was missing and continued to be missing, and the cruel month went by and brought them no news of her.
The six guardians took their trouble hard. Apart from the emotions that had been precipitated by her developing charms, they loved her dearly as the child they had taken to their hearts and bestowed all their young enthusiasm and energy and tenderness upon. She was the living clay, as Gertrude had said so many years before, that they had molded as nearly as possible to their hearts’ desire. They loved her for herself, but one and all they loved her for what they had made of 278 her—an exquisite, lovely young creature, at ease in a world that might so easily have crushed her utterly if they had not intervened for her.
They kept up the search unremittingly, following false leads and meeting with heartbreaking discouragements and disappointments. Only Margaret had any sense of peace about her.
“I’m sure she’s all right,” she said; “I feel it. It’s hard having her gone, but I’m not afraid for her. She’ll work it out better than we could help her to. It’s a beautiful thing to be young and strong and free, and she’ll get the beauty out of it.”
“I think perhaps you’re right, Margaret,” David said. “You almost always are. It’s the bread and butter end of the problem that worries me.”
Margaret smiled at him quaintly.
“The Lord provides,” she said. “He’ll provide for our ewe lamb, I’m sure.”
“You speak as if you had it on direct authority.”
“I think perhaps I have,” she said gravely.
Jimmie and Gertrude grew closer together as the weeks passed, and the strain of their fruitless quest continued. One day Jimmie showed her the letter that Eleanor had written him. 279