CHAPTER III
ADRIFT IN THE GREAT CITY
“My darling! My darling!” cried Judge Breckenridge, clasping his daughter close to his breast, then holding her off at arm’s length, the better to scan her beloved face and to observe the changes a few months of absence had wrought. “My darling Molly! More like the other Molly than ever! Now my vacation has indeed begun!”
“Papa, Papa! You sweetest, dearest, beautifullest Papa ever lived! How good it is to see you! And, yes Auntie Lu, you’re dear too; but a body’s father—Why, he’s her father and nobody like him, nobody!”
In her enthusiastic greeting of and by her relatives Molly forgot everything and everybody else. She had crossed the gang-plank as swiftly as the people crowding behind and before her would permit, her feet restlessly dancing up and down in the limited space; and now that she was upon the solid wharf to which the steamer was moored she bore them along with her by an arm linked to each, eager to be free of that throng and in some quiet spot where she could perch upon her father’s knee and talk, talk, talk!
Had any of the trio thought about it for a moment they would have observed Miss Greatorex lingering close to the plank and staring at everyone who crossed it, searching for Dorothy.
“Strange! She certainly was right here a minute ago! I thought she had gone off the boat ahead of me, but she couldn’t have done so, for she’s nowhere in sight;” she murmured to herself.
When all had crossed and still Dorothy did not appear, the anxious teacher returned to the boat and renewed her search there: asking of all the employees she met if they had seen her missing charge. But one of them had noticed the girl at all; that was a workman who had helped to drag the gang-plank into place upon the wharf and against whom Dorothy had rudely dashed in her pursuit of the “shiny man.”
He remembered her excited manner, her swift apology to himself for the accident, and her frantic rush across the wharf. He had looked after her with curiosity and had remarked to a bystander: