“That, my dear, is exactly what this lady and I would like to know. I was in hopes she might have seen you standing here and crossed to join you. Well, she’s been in too great haste, likely, and started by herself to go—I wonder where! Anyway, the best thing to be done is for you three to get into this carriage and drive to the Astor House and order dinner for all of us. It’s an old-time hotel where my father and I used to go when I was a boy myself, and I patronized it for old association’s sake. You, small daughter, had fixed your mind on nothing less than the Waldorf-Astoria, I expect! Never mind; you’ll get as good food in one place as the other.”
“But, Papa, aren’t you coming with us?”
“Not just yet. I’ll stop behind a bit and set a few policemen or small boys in search for Miss Dorothy. Tell me something by which we can recognize her when found. New York is pretty full of little girls, you know, and I might miss her among so many.”
The Judge tried to make his tone a careless one but there was real anxiety in it as his sister promptly understood; but she also felt it best to treat the matter lightly, for already poor Miss Isobel was on the point of collapse. So she answered readily enough:
“Very well, brother, so we’ll do. I reckon I know your tastes so that I can cater for you and—is there any limit to what we may order? I’m a bit hungry myself and always do crave the most expensive dishes on the menu. Good-by, for a little while.”
The Judge bade the driver: “To the Astor House;” lifted his hat to those within the carriage, and it moved away.
Then he summoned a policeman and asked that scouts be sent out all through that neighborhood, to search for a “thirteen-year-old girl, in a brown linen dress, dark curly hair, brown eyes, and—‘Oh! just too stylish for words!’” which was the description his daughter had given him. Indeed, he felt that this very “stylishness” might be a clue to the right person; since denizens of that locality, girls or women, are not apt to have that characteristic about them.
He was a weary man. He had been up late the night before, and previous to his journey hither had been extremely busy leaving matters right in his southern home for a prolonged absence. He had counted upon the hour or two before sailing in which to procure some additions to his sportsman’s outfit, and sorely begrudged this unexpected demand upon his time. Yet he could do no less than try to find the runaway, and to make the search as thorough as if it had been his own child’s case.
It was more than an hour later that he appeared in the dining-room of the hotel where his family awaited him. They had still delayed their own dinner, though Molly’s hunger had almost compelled her to enjoy hers. Only the thought of “eating with Papa,” had restrained her, because she had little fear that Dorothy would not be promptly found, or that she had done more than go a few blocks out of the way. She had often been in that city before, though only in its better parts, and it all seemed simple enough to her. It had been explained that the upper part was laid out in squares, with the avenues running north and south, the cross-streets easily told by their numbers. How then could anybody who could count be lost?
“No news, Schuyler?” asked Aunt Lucretia.