Now, the Morning Post devoted the first column of its front page to important announcements and small advertisements—like "Lost and Found," the death and marriage notices, and "personals." Agnes called it the "Agony Column," for the "personals" always headed it.
Ruth was sure Neale was staring at something printed very near the top of the column. He stood there, motionless, long enough to have read any ordinary advertisement half a dozen times.
Then he laid the paper quietly on one of the porch chairs and tiptoed off the veranda, disappearing around the corner of the house without looking back once; so Ruth did not see his face.
"What can be the matter with him?" murmured Ruth, and seized the paper herself.
She swiftly scrutinized the upper division of the first column of type. There were the usual requests for the return of absent friends, and several cryptic messages understood only by the advertiser and the person to whom the message was addressed.
The second "Personal" was different. It read as follows:
Strayed, or Runaway from His Guardian:—Boy, 15, slight figure, very light hair, may call himself Sorber, or Jakeway. His Guardian will pay Fifty Dollars for information of his safety, or for his recovery. Address Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie, en-route.
Ruth read this through; but she read it idly. It made no more appeal to her just then than did half a dozen of the other advertisements—"personal," or otherwise.
So she carried the paper slowly upstairs, wondering all the time what Neale O'Neil could have seen in the column of advertising to so affect him. Perhaps had Agnes been at hand to discuss the matter, together the girls might have connected the advertisement of the tow-headed boy with Neale O'Neil.
But Agnes was out on an errand, and when she did return she was so full herself of something which she wished to tell Ruth that she quite drove thought of the white-haired boy, for the time being, out of the older girl's mind. As soon as she saw Ruth she began her tale.