"There's the canal bank," Ruth said quickly. "It's open fields along there. Sometimes the children have gone there with us."
"I just know Sammy has fallen in and been drowned," declared Mrs. Pinkney, accepting the supposition as a fact on the instant. "What will I ever say to Sam'l to-night when he comes home?"
"Well," said Tess, encouragingly, "I guess he won't spank Sammy for doing that. At least, I shouldn't think he would."
The older folk did not pay much attention to her philosophy. They were all more or less worried, including Mrs. MacCall and Aunt Sarah. The latter displayed more trouble over Dot's absence than one might have expected, knowing the maiden lady's usual unattached manner of looking at all domestic matters.
Ruth, feeling more responsibility after all than anybody else—and perhaps with more anxious love in her heart for Dot than the others, for had she not had the principal care of Dot since babyhood?—could not be convinced now that all they could do was to wait.
"There must be some way of tracing them," she declared. "If they were over on Meadow Street somebody must have seen them after they left Mrs. Kranz's store."
"That is the place to take up their trail, Ruth," Luke said. "Tell me how to find the store and I'll go down there and make enquiries."
"I will go with you," the eldest Corner House girl said quickly. "I know the people there and you don't."
"I'll go, too!" cried Agnes, wiping her eyes.
"No," said her sister decisively. "No use in more going. You remain at home with Tess and Cecile. I am much obliged to you, Luke. We'll start at once."