“She is in Katie Ashley’s charge for school hours this week,” said Miss Blake.
“True, but where is Katie? Does any one at the table know where Katie and the other absent ones are?”
But no one knew, and Mrs. Abbott, with some displeasure expressed on her face, sent one of the maids up-stairs to search for the absentees, while the dinner proceeded in uncomfortable silence till interrupted just as the plates of the first course were being removed by the entrance of Lily, who ran into the room with a white face, glanced at Elfie’s vacant place, and cried out apprehensively:
“O, I did hope she might have come back alone! We cannot find her anywhere!”
“Who are you talking about?” asked Mrs. Abbott, turning very pale and speaking sternly. “Is it Elfie you cannot find?”
Then Lily, before them all, gave a rapid history of the deliberate disobedience, their interview with the fortune-teller, and Elfie’s disappearance.
Mrs. Abbott heard it to the end in silence, but her face looked haggard and worried as she herself led the way to a thorough search in every direction. The other S. C. girls had nothing to add to Lily’s story, but huddled together regretting bitterly, now that it was too late, their disobedience, which had caused all this trouble.
Inquiries at the station showed that the fortune teller and her sister, with a man in attendance, took the train at 1:15, but as they did not get their tickets it could not be learned at what place they would leave the cars. They reached the station only just in time for the train, which they boarded instantly. They were loaded down with shawls and packages, but no one saw a child in their company.
The proprietor of the livery-stable said two ladies who had stopped a day behind the circus hired a carriage of him, but on meeting a gentleman friend dismissed him with orders to meet them and take charge of his carriage at the arrival of the 1:15 train. He was a moment late, but found his horses and the empty carriage standing back of the station and the young man just following the ladies into the cars. They had paid him more than he asked when dismissing him.
It was some hours before another train left, and Mrs. Abbott, in sad perplexity, went to her old friend Mr. Mason, the bank president, who was also Addie’s father, who advised telegraphing to Troy to have the in-coming train searched for the party, which they described as nearly as possible.