"You've hit it, uncle," said Jack, laughing. "Aunt Rachel always looks as if she was attending a funeral."
"So she is, my boy," said Abel, gravely, "and a sad funeral it is."
"I don't understand you, uncle."
"The funeral of her affections—that's what I mean. Perhaps you mayn't know that Rachel was, in early life, engaged to be married to a young man whom she ardently loved. She was a different woman then from what she is now. But her lover deserted her just before the wedding was to have come off, and she's never got over the disappointment. But that isn't what I was going to talk about. You haven't told me about your adopted sister."
"That's the very thing I've come to Philadelphia about," said Jack, soberly. "Ida has been carried off, and I've come in search of her."
"Been carried off? I didn't know such things ever happened in this country. What do you mean?"
Jack told the story of Mrs. Hardwick's arrival with a letter from Ida's mother, conveying the request that her child might, under the guidance of the messenger, be allowed to pay her a visit. To this and the subsequent details Abel Harding listened with earnest attention.
"So you have reason to think the child is in Philadelphia?" he said, musingly.
"Yes," said Jack; "Ida was seen in the cars, coming here, by a boy who knew her in New York."
"Ida?" repeated the baker. "Was that her name?"