"Oh!" cried Phronsie, running after with pink cheeks and outstretched arms, "give me back my child; stop, little girl."
But there wras no stop to the long, thin figure flying down the path on the other side of the tall hedge. It was a back passage, and few pedestrians used the path; in fact, there were none on it this afternoon, so the children had it all to themselves. And on they went, Phronsie, with but one thought—to rescue her child from the depths of woe such as being carried off by a strange mother would produce—blindly plunging after.
At last the girl with the doll stopped suddenly, flung herself up against a stone fence, and drew a long breath.
"Well, what you goin' to do about it?" she cried defiantly, clutching the doll with a savage grip.
Phronsie, too far gone for words, sank panting down to the curbstone, to watch her with wild eyes.
"You said I might take her," the girl blurted out. "I hain't took nothin' but what you give me. I want to play with her to my home. You come with me, and then you can take her back with you."
"I can't," said Phronsie, in a faint little voice. Her cheeks were very red, and she wiped her hot face on her white apron. "You must give me Clorinda, and I must go home," and she held out a shaking hand.
But the girl danced off, and Phronsie, without a thought beyond the rescue of her child, stumbled on after her, scarcely seeing one step before her for the tears that, despite all her efforts, now began to stream down her round cheeks.
At last, in trying to turn out for a baker's boy with a big basket, she caught her foot and fell, a tired little heap, flat in a mud puddle in the middle of the brick pavement.
"My eye!" cried the baker's boy, lifting her up. "Here, you girl, your sister's fell, ker-squash!"