“‘Then where is she?’ asked Perseus. And that was what no one of them could answer; and Starland wasn’t a happy place.”
“They could think she’d run away,” suggested the Kitten.
“Or drowned in the river,” said Miss Phyllisy in a tragic voice.
“They couldn’t bear to think it was anything serious; but it was a mystery where she could be. They wandered from place to place, asking one another what it could mean. And everywhere they ran across Little Bear, roaming uneasy and disconsolate: even old Major was restless.
“‘You don’t suppose the Stranger came and carried her off to the Far-Away Isles, do you?’ asked Andromeda.
“‘No, I do not,’ said Orion, very positively.
“‘She wouldn’t have gone! She wouldn’t have left us,’ Taygeta declared.
“‘Suppose he took her?’ insisted Andromeda.
“‘Nonsense!’ said Cassiopeia.
“But when the night was gone without any sign of her, and a cloudless night followed and there were only six girls in the group where there should have been seven, what could they think? What could keep one of the Star People from her place, unless something really had happened to her? And when they had borne her absence for two cloudless nights, their hearts had grown heavier and heavier, and they had almost given up any hope of seeing their dear Merope again.”