“That’s all very well, Mrs. Hungerford, and Molly. But I shan’t go one step toward Nova Scotia till I’ve found my little girl. You three are all right, you’ve got yourselves and of course other people don’t matter. But Dorothy saved my life and I’ll not desert her to nobody knows what dreadful fate! No, I will not, and you needn’t say another single word!”
As nobody had interrupted her excited speech this last admonition seemed rather uncalled for, but Molly waxed indignant thereat, though her Aunt Lucretia merely smiled compassionately. Then as they still stood upon the sidewalk, hesitating to enter their carriage, Miss Isobel waved her umbrella wildly toward another hack, and when it had obeyed her summons sprang into it and was whirled away.
Where was Dorothy all this time? Little she knew of the commotion she had caused. Indeed, for a long time, her only thought was for herself and her unfortunate predicament. She had never been so frightened in her life. Nothing had ever looked so big, so dismal, and so altogether hopeless as this wretched side street where her fugitive had disappeared. There was not a policeman in sight. She didn’t know which way to go, but promptly realized that she should not stay just there in that degraded neighborhood. Even the wider street from which she had diverged, with its endless lines of wagons and people, was better. But—she must go somewhere!
She set out forward, resolutely, and as it proved eastward toward that famous Broadway which threads the city from its north to south, but that was yet many blocks removed. Indeed, it seemed an endless way that stretched beyond her; and it was not until she had run for some distance that her common sense awoke with the thought:
“Why, how silly I am! I must go back to the boat. That’s where I’ll be missed and looked for. Of course, Miss Greatorex wouldn’t go on and leave me, and oh! dear! I reckon I’ve made her wait till she’ll be angry. I’ll ask the first nice looking gentleman I see, if no policeman comes, the way to the ‘Mary Powell.’ Here comes one now—”
A busy man came speeding toward her, whose coat skirt she tried to clutch; but he didn’t even hear the question she put. He merely waved her aside, as he would any other street beggar with the passing remark: “Nothing. Get away!”
The second person to whom she applied was German and shook his head with a forcible negative. So he, too, moved on and she stopped to think and recover some portion of that courage which had almost deserted her.
“Of course. I couldn’t be really lost, not really truly so, right in the broad daylight and a city full of people. But I am ashamed to have stayed so long. Oh! good! There comes a man in uniform—a policeman, a policeman!”
Quite at rest now she darted forward and caught at the hand of the uniformed person who stared at her in surprise but not unkindly.
“Well, little maid, what’s wanted?”