“I shall telephone at once to the station-master and learn if she has taken any of the trains from the depot to-day and if she has I will go to the city the first thing in the morning and find her, wherever she is, and bring her back.”
Priscilla’s tears had ceased. The thought of Polly alone, far off, somewhere in the distant, dangerous darkness, made her heart stand still with horror. She followed her mother and Hannah silently down-stairs and stood by trembling while the telephone bell tinkled merrily and the dreadful news came back over the wire that Polly had indeed taken the earliest morning train that very day for the city and that if there was anything wrong the station-master was very sorry, but he had thought it was all right to let her go, although, now he came to think of it, he had wondered at her being permitted to take such a long journey alone. The ticket-seller said he remembered her particularly, “because she seemed such a young one to be shifting for herself.” He recollected that she had bought a ticket to town, but not back, and had paid for it with a lot of loose change—“quarters and dimes and nickles and such.” If he could do anything for Mrs. Duer she’d oblige him by letting him know.
But even now Hannah would not believe that Polly had run away.
“Why, don’t you see, Mrs. Duer, it’s impossible,” she exclaimed in real distress. “Polly isn’t disobedient nor ungrateful nor disloyal and she’d be all of these and more if she’d gone off so and left us without a word. There must be some way of explaining it.”
But Mrs. Duer was not so sure. She felt terribly anxious and harassed. What could she say to Polly’s sister if anything had happened to the child? What could she do?
Well, certainly nothing to-night. She would take the earliest train to the city in the morning and in the meantime they must all get what rest they could. Priscilla looked white and worn and ought to be put to bed as soon as she had eaten her supper. But Priscilla could only choke over her food and beg to be “excused” from the table. It was a sad ending to a day that had begun so merrily.
And how was Polly faring all this time?
The journey in the train proved to be tediously long and dreary. Quite, quite different from the one she had taken last, when she and Priscilla had passed over the same road some months ago, in coming to the country. After a while she began to feel faint and sick from the motion of the cars and, though she did not realize it, from hunger. The cold milk and hard biscuits of her breakfast were all Theresa had provided her with, so her usual luncheon time came and went and she had nothing to eat. Her empty little stomach rebelled. But she had no thought for herself, her mind and heart were brimful of sister, while the train that was carrying her to the city where sister lay sick—worse—seemed to do no more than slowly crawl. The wheels refused to grind out pleasant tunes, the hot sun blazed viciously through the window next which she sat and the dust and smoke and cinders blew in and settled upon her until she was covered with grime and grit.
Put at last the end of the journey was reached. Polly took up her heavy, cumbersome bundle and stumbled blindly out into the vast, busy station, amid a babel of voices and a hurrying, struggling press of passengers. She pushed forward in the thickest of the crowd and presently found herself in the street, almost deafened by the clang and clatter of trolley cars, the shouts of eager hackmen and the piercing cries of shrill-voiced newsboys. The midday sun glared blindly into her eyes and beat pitilessly upon her burning cheeks. She looked about her in dismay, for she did not know her way about this part of town and, for the first time in her life, the confusion of the city terrified her. Theresa had bade her speak to no one and so she did not venture to ask her way. Tugging wearily at her bulky burden she, somehow, got past the line of shouting hackmen standing about the station steps, and managed to cross the street. People pushed and jostled her; draymen, with rough, hoarse voices, ordered her out of the way, and motormen clanged their bells to warn her off the track. She stumbled blindly along, hardly knowing where she set her feet and really wandering straight in the wrong direction. It seemed to her that she was forgotten and forsaken by all the world.
She had known her way to and from the store and around and about the streets near Priscilla’s house, but here she was all astray. She stood still and tried to recall Theresa’s directions for reaching the hospital: “You go through the station and up Madison Avenue for a while and there you are!”