“Never mind, Molly, you stay right here. See! they’re fixing that gang-plank again, at this very part of the deck. You stand right outside, close against the rail but where you won’t be in the men’s way and, if he’s there, you’ll surely see him.
“I’ll go back and get the purses. Where did you lay them?”
“Hum. I don’t know. I can’t exactly think. You handed me yours, I remember, when you stooped to pick up his crutch he’d knocked down. Ah! Now I know. My hands got so warm and your pocketbook was red and I thought it would stain my new gloves. So I just laid them down on the bench beside him. You’ll find them right there beside him. You can ask him which paper, then, and I say, Dolly Doodles, what right had that hindering old thing to expect us—us—to buy his papers for him? Why didn’t he give us the money, himself? Seems if we’d been sort of—sort of goosies, doesn’t it?”
“Oh! Molly! That’s not nice of you to think about that dear, lame old man! And why he didn’t was, I suppose, because he didn’t think. We don’t always think ourselves, dearie. Never mind. I’ll hurry and be right back.”
“Yes, do—do hurry! I’ve said so much about you in my letters I’m just suffering to have you two meet. Just suffering! Hark! They’re whistling and ringing the bell and we’ll be there in a minute! Do, do hurry—for I believe I see him now—that tall one at the end of the wharf—Hurry—or, better still—Wait! Wait!”
But long before the excited Molly had finished speaking Dorothy had run up the stairs, along the long passage to the aft deck where she had left her lame acquaintance waiting for her to do his simple errand.
He was not in the spot where she had left him. He was not in the big saloon, or parlor. He was not upon the forward deck; not yet amid the crowd pressed to the deck’s rail, to watch for whatever might be seen at this historic landing place. Flying to the rail she scanned the few departing passengers and he was not among them. She saw, but scarcely realized that she did, a group of three cadets who had come as near the steamer as the wharf permitted and were gaily chattering with her chum, during the short stop that was made.
“Could he have fallen overboard? And if he did why did he take our purses with him?” she wondered. Then reflected that it would be a difficult thing to explain this affair to Miss Greatorex; and also that the missing pocket-books contained a full month’s “allowance” for both Molly and herself.