“Of course some one knows. Little Jane, as our friend Bul Run reminded us, can’t walk. If she went away, she was carried. By whom? And why? And where?”
“Dear me!” cried Beth, despairingly; “if we knew all that, we could find baby.”
“Exactly. So let’s try to acquire the knowledge.”
She went into Mildred’s room and made an examination of its contents. The place seemed in its usual order, but many of Mildred’s trinkets and personal possessions were scattered around.
“Her absence wasn’t premeditated,” decided Patsy. “Her white sweater is gone, but that is all. This fact, however, may prove that she expected to be out after dark. It is always chilly in this country after sundown and doubtless Mildred knew that.”
“Why, she used to live here!” cried Beth. “Of course she knew.”
Patsy sat down and looked at her cousin attentively.
“That is news to me,” she said in a tone that indicated she had made a discovery. “Do you mean that Mildred once lived in this neighborhood?”
“Yes; very near here. She told me she had known this old house well years ago, when she was a girl. She used to visit it in company with her father, a friend of old Señor Cristoval.”
“Huh!” exclaimed Patsy. “That’s queer, Why didn’t she tell us this, when we first proposed bringing her out here?”