"Chained?" gasped the excitable Agnes from the rear. "How awful! Have you got children—"
"Aw, who said anything about children?" demanded Louise snappily. "Only John and Jerry."
"Well?"
"Them's mules," said the child, as Neale drove the car on at increasing speed.
"Tell us," Ruth begged, quite as anxious now as her sister, "have you seen two children—a boy and a girl—this afternoon?"
"Lots of 'em," replied Louise, succinctly.
Here Cap'n Bill put in a word. "If there's anything to see, children, or what not, Lowise seen 'em. She's got the brightest eyes!"
"We are looking for a little girl with a doll in her arms and a boy about ten years old. They were carrying a big paper bag and a basket of fruit, and maybe were near the canal at Milton—right there at the blacksmith shop where you had your mules shod to-day."
This was Luke's speech, and despite the jarring and bouncing of the car he made his earnest words audible to the captain of the canalboat and to his daughter.
"Did they come aboard your boat? Or did you see them?" he added.