Moreover, it fell in with Dorothy's own desires that she was to make the post-office trip: and she started upon it with so much confidence that her mother was surprised and remarked:
"Well, small daughter, for a child who knows so little of business and has never been further down town than the market, alone, you are behaving beautifully. I'm proud of you. So will your father be. Maybe, if any of the agents I'm going to telephone come here to-day and keep me, I'll let you go to pay the daily visit to John and tell him all the news. Take care of the street crossings. It's so crowded on the business streets and I should be forlorn, indeed, if harm befell my Dorothy C."
Even when the child turned, half-way down the block, to toss a kiss backward to her mother in the doorway, that anxious woman felt a strange fear for her darling and recalled her for a final caution:
"Be sure to take care of your car-fare, Dorothy; and be more than sure you don't lose the money-letter. When you board a car look to see another isn't coming on the other track, to knock you down."
The little girl came back and clung to Mrs. Chester for a moment, laughing, yet feeling her own courage a trifle dashed by these suggestions of peril. But she slipped away again, determining to do her errands promptly, while, with a curious foreboding in her mind, the housemistress re-entered her deserted home, reflecting:
"John always laughs at my 'presentiments,' yet I never had one as strong as this upon me now that I did not wish, afterward, I had yielded to it. I've half a mind to follow the child and overtake her before she gets into a car. I could snatch a little while to do those downtown errands and she'd be perfectly safe here. Pshaw! How silly I am! Dorothy is old enough to be trusted and can be. I'll put her out of mind till I hear her gay little call at the door, when she rings its bell: 'It's I, mother Martha! Please let me in!'"
But alas! That familiar summons was never again to be heard at No. 77 Brown Street.
CHAPTER VII
AN OFFICE SEEKER AND A CLIENT