“The two children are lost,” said Amy briefly, before she ran off.
“Great Cæsar’s ghost!” cried Robert Bingley. “Excuse me, Miss Salisbury,” as he now saw her; and clearing the veranda railing with one bound, he struck off for the group on the lawn. Just below lay the deserted mud-pies and the two little trowels.
Meantime Amy, gathering up her skirts with one shaking hand, skipped down the road, only one feeling uppermost in her heart,—to find Polly’s children. “I must, or I shall die,” sobbed Amy to herself, the tears splashing over her pretty blue lawn gown.
An old scissors-grinder came down the road, ringing his bell violently. “Oh, sir!” cried Amy, rushing up at him, “have you seen two little children, a boy and a girl? they’re lost, and we don’t know where to find them.” She wrung her hands now, and cried all over her dress.
“Hey?” cried the scissors-grinder.
“Oh! please, sir, do tell me if you have seen them,” begged Amy.
“I’m deef,” said the scissors-grinder, “and I don’t know what you’re saying, Miss;” and he put his hand behind his ear, and opened his mouth, as if in that way his hearing might be improved. So Amy got up on tiptoe, and shouted it all into his ear; and he shook his head, and declared he hadn’t seen a child on the road that morning, and he had just come from Badgertown Centre.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “I’ll ring my bell, and then I’ll cry, ‘Child lost’—no, ‘two children lo-ost,’ and then everybody’ll know it, and look out for ’em.” So he went on, ringing and jingling, and calling it out, while she flew down along the road.
“There isn’t any use in your doing this,” said a voice back of her as she sped along; and Robert Bingley dashed up in a dog-cart. “Here, Miss Loughead, jump in, and we’ll search for those two kids together.”
“They’re Polly’s children,” announced Amy, as if stating a wholly new fact, and turning her sorrowful face, down which the tears were chasing, to him; “and it will just kill her, Mr. Bingley, if they’re not found.”