A Modern Tomboy: A Story for Girls

by L. T. Meade

"Oh, don't ask me! I mean—oh, no, no! But I'll help you to find her. I'll do my best—my very best."

The whole house was awakened, and the alarm given. The Professor was not yet in bed. He was very much worried and annoyed. He directly told Irene that he believed she was guilty of giving her little companion a fright.

"You have done it so often before, you know," he said, "that people certainly do suspect you."

"Suspect me or not as you please," she answered, "but let us find little Agnes. The night is cold; there is sleet falling outside. It will turn to snow before morning. Where is the child? After all," she continued, speaking more like a grown woman than the wild sort of creature that she had been a few months ago, "she is under your charge, Professor Merriman, and you are bound to do your utmost to find her."

But nowhere in the house—not even in the cellars, which Lucy as a last resort suggested might possibly be her hiding-place—could little Agnes be found. At last a regular outdoor search was instituted. Lucy was now really frightened, although she would not own this feeling even to herself.

"Silly, tiresome child!" she kept muttering to herself.

As to Irene, not a single word passed her lips. Suddenly, in the midst of the searchers, she was missing. People wondered where she had gone to. Irene had rushed back to her own room, the room where she and little Agnes had been so happy together. She looked at the little white bed where they had lain in each other's arms. All her past, so cruel, so thoughtless, so selfish, was borne in upon her. She dropped on her knees, and in an agony of terror said aloud, "O God, help me to find her, and to be a good girl in future."

Then Irene felt a wonderful sense of calm. She went down again through the house. No one noticed her, for every one was in a great state of alarm. Those girls who were in bed were desired not to get up; but a good many had disobeyed orders, and Miss Archer, Mademoiselle Omont (gesticulating wildly), Professor Merriman, his wife, the servants, and the older girls were all searching in vain for Agnes. They were calling her name, but no one thought of the bower at the far end of the shrubbery; for what child would be likely to take refuge there?

Irene, however, all of a sudden remembered it. She remembered the night long ago when she, a wild little untamed creature, had crept into the room where Rosamund slept, had forced her to come out with her, and they had spent the night together in the bower. She would go there now. She did not know what guided her footsteps, but she felt sure some one did.

Now, the shrubbery, a delightful place in warm weather, was damp and cold as ice at this time of the year. The leaves, now falling thickly from the trees, lay sodden on the ground. Sleet continued to fall heavily from the sky. All the seekers were chilled to the very bone, and the bower, so charming in summer, so perfect a resort, so happy a hiding-place, was now the very essence of desolation. But Irene cared nothing for that. She cared nothing for the fact that her thin shoes were soaked through and through, that her dress hung closely round her, that her hat was bent forward over her eyes. She only wanted to find little Agnes, and to have her love again. In the bower Irene did find the child crouched up in one corner, terrified, an almost unseeing expression in her eyes. Irene rushed to her with a glad cry.