“That little passenger is afraid she’ll get left! Maybe she doesn’t know we lie alongside this dock till mid-afternoon.”
Then he had gone about his own affairs and dismissed her from his mind till, thus recalled by Miss Greatorex’s question, he wished he had watched her more closely. He was afraid she might have been hurt among the heavy wagons moving about, and that was the poor comfort which he expressed to the now thoroughly frightened lady.
Meanwhile the Breckenridge party had crossed the street, under conveyance of a waiting policeman, and had paused upon the further curb while Molly explained:
“Miss Greatorex is dreadful slow, Papa dear. But she’ll be here in a minute. She’s sure to be and Dolly with her. Oh! she is the very sweetest, dearest, bravest girl I ever knew! If I had a sister I should want her to be exactly like Dorothy. I wonder what does keep them! And I’m so hungry, so terribly hungry and we lost our purses—couldn’t be she’d linger to search for them again when we’ve already ransacked the whole boat! Why, Papa, look! Miss Greatorex is on the boat again, herself. Running, fairly running around the deck and acting as if she, too, had lost something. How queer that is!”
Both the gentleman and lady now fixed their attention upon the teacher, until that moment unknown to them. She certainly was conducting herself in a strange, half-bewildered manner and the Judge realized that there was something wrong. Bidding his sister and child:
“Stay right here on this corner. Don’t leave it. I’ll step back to the steamer and see what’s amiss;” and to the hackman he had summoned, he added: “Keep your rig right on the spot and an eye upon these fares! I’ll be back in a minute.”
“ARE YOU A POLICEMAN?”
Dorothy’s Travels.
But he wasn’t. When he did come, after Mrs. Hungerford and Molly had had ample time to grow anxious themselves, it was with a woe-begone Miss Greatorex upon his arm and a very disturbed expression on his own face.
“Why, Papa, where’s Dolly? Why didn’t she come, too?” cried Molly, darting to meet him.