"I wish I could help you," she said, sincerely.
"You can," he earnestly assured her. "If you will only come out here with me now and again I shall be able to stand a whole lot of 'grief.'"
They were walking westward at the moment, past the golf-course, and a sense of uneasiness filled the girl's heart. She looked up at him with a grave face. "I don't know why, but I feel an impulse to hurry. I feel as though we ought to get home as quickly as possible. They may be worried about us."
He did not share her apprehension. "I don't think they'll suffer."
"Something urges me to run," she repeated. "We must go directly home."
He quickened his step with hers, responding to the anxiety which had come into her tone, but experiencing nothing of it in his heart. What he did feel was the certainty that his day of careless ease was over. The sky seemed suddenly to have lost its brightness. The birds had fallen silent. The crowds of people seemed less festive. The world of work-worn men rolled back upon them in a noisy flood as they caught a car and went speeding down the squalid avenue. Leo's anxiety seemed to increase rather than to lessen as they neared her home. "There's been some accident!" she insisted. "I can't tell what it is, but I think your mother has been hurt."
He could not believe that anything serious had happened to his mother; but when they alighted to walk across the boulevard he was quite as eager to reach the house as she.
The man at the door wore an expression of well-governed concern, which led Leo to sharply ask: "What is it, Ferguson? What has happened?"
"They have taken her, Miss."
"Taken? Who? What? Who have taken her?"