Sez he, “It goes agin my stomach every mou’ful I take (which was true anyway), but we must eat, Samantha,” sez he, helpin’ himself to another cake. “We must eat so’s to keep up our strength to hunt high and low.”
Well, I spozed he wuz in the right on’t, but every mou’ful he consumed riled me. But at last the plate wuz emptied and the coffee pot out and he sot off. And we searched all that day and the next and the next, and so did Miss Meechim and Arvilly, with tears runnin’ down her face anon or oftener.
Robert Strong, led on, Miss Meechim said by her anxiety, but I thought mebby by the agony in Dorothy’s sweet eyes as well as his own good heart, didn’t leave a stone unturned in his efforts to find ’em. But they had disappeared utterly, no trace could be found of ’em. They had been seen during the evening with the two young men they had got acquainted with and that I didn’t like. They had been seen speaking with them as they came out of the shop where Dorothy had sent Aronette, and the young men could not be found.
Well, we had all searched for three days without finding any trace of the two missing girls. Everything wuz ready for our departure, but Dorothy said that she could not, could not go without Aronette, but Robert Strong said and believed that the child was dead. He had come to the belief that she and Lucia by some accident had fallen into the water and wuz drowned. Dorothy had cried herself sick and she looked wan and white, but bein’ so sweet dispositioned she give up when we all said that we must go before long, and said that she would go too, though I knew that her heart would remain there wanderin’ round in them queer streets huntin’ for her lost one. The morning of the third day after they wuz lost I wuz down in the parlor, when a man come in and spoke to Robert Strong, and they both went out together talking earnestly, and I see in Robert’s 161 face a look of horrow and surprise that I had never seen in it before; and the first time Robert saw me alone after that he told me the dretful news. He said that the man that spoke to him was a detective he had employed, and the evening before he had come acrost a man who had been out of town since the night Aronette wuz lost. This man told the detective that he saw her and Lucia and the two young men coming out of a saloon late at night, staggering and reeling they all wuz, and they disappeared down a cross street towards another licensed house of ruin. Licensed by Christian America! Oh, my achin’ heart to think on’t! “I wonder if our govermunt is satisfied now,” I broke out, “since it has ruined her, one of the sweetest girls in the world. But how did they ever entice ’em into that saloon?” sez I.
“They might have made them think it was respectable, they do serve lunches at some of them; of course they didn’t know what kind of a place it was. And after they wuz made stupid drunk they didn’t know or care where they went.”
“I wonder if America is satisfied now!” I sez agin, “reachin’ out her long arms clear acrost the Pacific to lead them sweet girls into the pit she has dug for her soldiers? Oh!” sez I, “if she’d only been drownded!” And I wiped my streamin’ eyes on my linen handkerchief.
And Robert sithed deep and sez, “Yes, if she had only died, and,” he sez, “I can’t tell Dorothy, I cannot.”
And I sez, “There is no need on’t; better let her think she’s dead. How long,” sez I, turning toward him fierce in my aspect, “how long is the Lord and decent folks goin’ to allow such things to go on?”
And he sez, “Heaven knows, I don’t.” And we couldn’t say more, for Dorothy wuz approachin’, and Robert called up a smile to his troubled face as he went forward to meet her. But he told me afterwards that the news had almost killed Elder Wessel. He had to tell him to help him in his search. He wuz goin’ to stay on there a spell longer. He had to 162 tell him that Lucia had been seen with Aronette staggering out of a saloon with two young men late at night, reeling down a by-street to that other licensed house which our Christian govermunt keeps nigh the saloon, it is so obleegin’ and fatherly to its men and boys.
When he told him Elder Wessel fell right down in his chair, Robert said, and buried his face in his hands, and when he took his hands down it wuz from the face of an old man, a haggard, wretched, broken-down old man.