Lunch was half over when Tom Roberts came in with a scared expression on his usually somewhat stolid face.
"If you please, miss, nurse wishes to speak to you."
"What is the matter, Roberts?" Hilda exclaimed, starting up. "Has Walter met with an accident?"
"Well, no, miss, not as I know of, but nurse has come home, and she is just like a wild thing; somehow or other Master Walter has got lost."
Hilda, followed by Netta and Miss Purcell, ran out into the hall. The nurse, a woman of two or three and thirty, the daughter of one of the General's tenants, and who had been in charge of the child since he arrived a baby from India, was sitting on a chair, sobbing bitterly. Her bonnet hung down at the back of her head, her hair was unloosed, and she had evidently been running wildly to and fro. Her appearance at once disarmed Hilda, who said soothingly:
"How has it happened, nurse? Stop crying and tell us. I am sure that it could not have been your fault, for you are always so careful with him. There is no occasion to be so terribly upset. Of course he will soon be found. The first policeman who sees him will be sure to take him to the station. Now how did it happen?"
"I was walking along Queen's Road, miss," the woman said between her sobs, "and Master Walter was close beside me. I know that special, because we had just passed a crossing, and I took hold of his hand as we went over—when a man—he looked like a respectable working-man—came up to me and said, 'I see you are a mother, ma'am.' 'Not at all,' said I; 'how dare you say such a thing? I am a nurse; I am in charge of this young gentleman.' 'Well,' said he, 'I can see that you have a kind heart, anyhow; that is what made me speak to you. I am a carpenter, I am, and I have been out of work for months, and I have a child at home just about this one's age. He is starving, and I haven't a bit to put in his mouth. The parish buried my wife three weeks ago, and I am well-nigh mad. Would you give me the money to buy him a loaf of bread?' The man was in such distress, miss, that I took out my purse and gave him a shilling, and thankful he was; he was all but crying, and could not say enough to thank me. Then I turned to take hold of Walter's hand, and found that the child had gone. I could not have been more than two or three minutes talking; though it always does take me a long time to take my purse out of my pocket, still I know that it could not have been three minutes altogether.
"First of all, I went back to the crossing, and looked up and down the street, but he wasn't there; then I thought that perhaps he had walked on, and was hiding for fun in a shop doorway. When I could not see him up or down I got regular frighted, and ran up and down like a mad thing. Once I came back as far as the house, but there were no signs of him, and I knew that he could not have got as far as this, even if he had run all the way. Then I thought of the mews, and I ran back there. Master Walter was very fond of horses, and he generally stopped when we got to the entrance of the mews, and stood looking for a minute or two at the grooms cleaning the horses, and I thought that he might have gone in there. There were two or three men about, but none had seen the child. Still I ran on, and looked into several stables, a-calling for him all the time. When he wasn't there, I went well-nigh stark mad, and I ran up and down the streets asking everyone I met had they seen a child. Then I came back here to tell you."