“Four? Yes, I understand,” replied the Judge. “Mrs. Everest, we are tiring you.”
“Not at all; I want to tell you. I really enjoy giving you the details. Well, Mrs. Hume was in an agony when she saw the child drive away, for of course she knew that she had delivered her into the hands of two scapegrace young women. However, she raised her eyes across the street. There was Harry Busby throwing open his window and tossing aside the curtains. She knew that he had the number of the cab, and a description of it, and that he had telephoned to police headquarters. The cab would hardly be round the corner before a detective would be after it. Then there was Cracker scorching up and down beside it, his bad little head thrown over his handle bars, his gimlet eyes looking everywhere but at the driver, and yet observing his every movement. He remembered his orders. He was artlessly to follow any vehicle that left Mrs. Hume’s. Bethany was safe, but poor Mrs. Hume was in torture. She came on with a raging headache, had to send her scholars home, and go to bed.”
“I should think she needed to,” remarked the Judge.
“Ere this she has heard of our happy issue out of our difficulties,” continued Mrs. Everest. “Well, our cab went on its way.”
“Tell the Judge what order the young woman gave the driver,” interposed Tom.
“O, yes, I forgot that. Before they left Mrs. Hume’s the young woman said to the cabman, ‘Go to Jones’s drug store on Broadway.’ Then she explained to Mrs. Hume that they had to call there for medicine. They were really going to the railway station, but she didn’t want either Mrs. Hume or the cabman to know it. Upon arriving at Jones’s the two young women and a little boy stepped out of the cab, dismissed the driver, and went in the store.”
“They had metamorphosed Bethany, I suppose,” said the Judge, quietly.
“Yes, sir. As soon as they got her away from Mrs. Hume these two women overwhelmed her with caresses and gave her a box of candy, which they said you had sent her. They also informed her that you were going to New York, and that she was to go, too; that you would meet her there. Her grandfather, her mother’s father, had heard of her, and wanted to see her. He was going to give her a lovely house, full of dolls, and birds, and all kinds of toys. Now, you see all this harmonized with what the child had learned from her mother and Mrs. Tingsby. To any ordinary child it might have seemed remarkable, but Bethany had been brought up on expectations.”
“Don’t forget the boy part,” suggested her husband.
“No, I was just coming to it. These two young women told Bethany that in order to please her grandfather, who had always wished for a little boy, you had requested her to put on boy’s clothes. They had this little suit all ready,” and Mrs. Everest touched the boyish little garments of the sleeping child, “and they hurried her into it, and whipping out a pair of scissors cut off her hair before the bewildered child had time to protest. She was confused and submissive, and I fancy they kept stuffing her mouth with candy, and quoted you to her. At the drug store they bought five cents’ worth of cough drops, then they went into the street and walked a block to the railway station. They did not hurry, neither did they dawdle. They did not want Bethany to speak to anyone.”