He plodded down the hill without an idea that he shouldn’t find the little girl in Mr. Cross Moore’s kitchen. The selectman was fond of little Lottie, and often brought her into the house to see his wife, who was an invalid.
When Nelson Haley knocked at the kitchen door, the slipshod girl who waited on Mrs. Moore answered his summons. Mr. Cross Moore was not at home. No; the little girl hadn’t been there that day.
“But I seed her slidin’ on her sled this arternoon,” drawled the girl, who was an output of an orphan asylum—the sort of person, because of mental and physical deficiencies, that few people would take into their homes.
“Where did she go, my good girl?” asked Haley, with anxiety.
“It was beginning to snow and she went right down yonder on the pond.”
“To the cove, you mean?”
“Yep. And out on the ice. Mebbe she’s fell through a hole.”
“You didn’t see her come back?”
“Nop. It begun to snow right hard then, anyway.”
“How long ago was this?”