“Two hours have been wasted,” said Mrs. Heard; “although we did not know we were wasting them, of course. We had to do what we could toward finding the children near by. But now we must waste no more hours. We must get help.”
“Oh! what help?” cried Agnes.
“We must run to the next town—Frog Hollow,” said Neale, in an undertone“—and get the constable or sheriff or somebody. We must start a crowd with lanterns to beat the woods. Maybe somebody has seen the children. They may be safe already in somebody’s house.”
“Or in the police station,” put in Sammy Pinkney. “I got lost once and that’s where they found me. Of course, I was a kid then. The cops was real good to me. One of ’em bought me ten cents worth of butter-scotch—you know, that awful, sticky, pully candy, Neale. And when my father come I couldn’t holler to him ’cause my teeth was all stuck up.”
“I bet that cop gave you the candy on purpose to shut your mouth,” growled Neale. “You were talking them to death, it is probable.”
“Oh, dear, me!” cried Agnes, “don’t let us just talk; let’s do something.”
“Mrs. Heard is quite right, I can see,” Ruth observed, recovered now in a measure from her first panic. “We must ask the authorities to help us. I should have been more careful.”
“Why, Ruth,” said the chaperone, “don’t blame yourself. How could you have foreseen this?”
“I should not have allowed them out of my sight without Tom Jonah with them,” the oldest Corner House girl declared. “Nor will I again on this trip, you may be sure.”
“Come on, now,” growled Neale, who felt very much disturbed about the loss of the little girls but who, boy like, did not wish to show his feelings. “Come on, now; we’ve talked enough. Let’s do something. Get in here, Tom Jonah—you useless old thing! You’re not half a dog or you’d have been able to follow ’em.”