They had been playing happily, the two children, when the family decided to go away for a few hours, but so happily were they with their dolls and each other, that they paid no attention to the stir and unrest about them. Even Elinor, who was almost six years old, had not concerned herself with the sound of the big guns.
She did not notice when her father left the room. If he told her, as he thought he had, to "sit quietly" and await his return, she failed to hear him. So she took Rika by the hand and "went, visiting." They sat down on the top step, and looked into the empty street, and watched occasional groups of fleeing Poles hurry past to the safety of the plains. A rough looking woman came past, noticed them, and returned, looking as she did so at the house, and peering into the hall through the open door.
Then she approached the children and in a voice she tried in vain to make soft, she asked what they were doing, and who they were.
Little Rika, who could say but few words, sat and stared at her with a frown.
Elinor answered politely. The woman studied them carefully. Elinor was a child whose beauty was always remarked wherever she went, and the little Rika was equally lovely. They had been used to kindness and attention from everyone, so when the woman took out a queer little box, and offered them each a funny little black candy, they accepted them quite as a matter of course. Then she drew back, and the children turned to their dolls again. But only for a moment. Then the head of golden curls and the long, black ringlets drooped and the drugged children were asleep. The woman shook two big sacks out from beneath her dress, and as coolly and as cruelly as though she was filling them with straw, she shoved a child in either bag, crossed to the curb with her heavy burden, and sat down to wait.
When her two accomplices joined her, they went rapidly to the hovel where Warren had tracked them later, and releasing the half smothered and unconscious children, they laid them down on a pile of rags, and sat looking at them, while they ate their evening portion of black bread and cold fish.
There was a great discussion. The larger man, Michael, was in favor of offering the children for a ransom. The others would not consider it at all.
"Remember," said Martha, the woman, "there is much danger in collecting such fees. Rather will I prepare these little ladies for the trade of beggars. So beautiful are they that I can go through every capital in Europe, if so Europe still stands."
"Have it your own way," said the smaller man, Patro by name.
"I always do," she said simply. Then she studied the sleeping forms again.