In the distance she saw the grenadier Mrs. Hogan approaching, and she had a feeling that the woman would not be pleased if she knew Celia had been talking to anybody.
“Here, dear,” said Dorothy, hastily, drawing out her purse and giving the child a crisp dollar bill. “You hide that away. Maybe you will want to spend some of it for candies, or ribbons, or something. Let me kiss you. You dear little thing! I will try to find your brother just as hard as ever I tried to do anything in my life.”
“I guess you can find him,” returned Celia, with assurance, looking wistfully up at Dorothy Dale. “You’re so big, you know. I want to see you again.”
“And you shall. I’ll find out where Mrs. Hogan lives and come to see you,” declared Dorothy.
But then the big woman came and grabbed the child by the wrist. “Come on, you!” she exclaimed. “We gotter hurry now, for Bentley’s waitin’.”
Celia looked back once over her shoulder as she was borne so hurriedly away. The little, thin face was twisted into a pitiful smile, and Dorothy bore the remembrance of that smile in her heart for many a long day.
Mrs. Hogan had been so abrupt that Dorothy had not plucked up courage to accost her. When she asked one of the railroad men if he knew where Jim Bentley, or Mrs. Hogan, lived, the man had never heard the names.
There was no time then to seek further for the locality of the farm to which little Celia Moran was being taken, for a train was backing down beside the platform and the conductor told her it would start in ten minutes for Glenwood.
So Dorothy ran to gather her scattered flock of schoolmates. Ned Ebony’s coat was dry enough to put on; but she had to go dressed in a conglomeration of other garments, some of which did not fit her very well. Tavia and the others made much fun over Edna’s plight.
“That hat!” groaned Tavia. “It—it looks just like you’d had it in pawn, Ned.”