“I want you to get hold of her, or help me to do it,” said Marion, with a bright smile lighting up her worried face for a moment.
“Good for you!” said Miss Manning, with a smile that was good to see, if less charming than the girl’s.
“Now, I’ve been thinking it over,” she continued, growing very sober, “and this is the way it stands. You don’t even know for certain the child is on the train?”
“No; but I am sure she must be.”
“Well, I guess she is; I feel it in my bones, as it were, that she is, an’ I’m kinder witchy about feeling things, but you can’t go through the cars looking at the folks to find out, for even if them circus fortune-tellers didn’t recognize you the child would likely holler out as soon as she seen you, an’ those folks’d get excited an’ try some other dodge. They might even try to get you arrested for trying to entice a child away from ’em.”
“Yes; I should have gone through the cars as soon as I paid my fare if I hadn’t been afraid of that, and that is why I wanted your help. I was going to ask the conductor if he had seen them, but I was afraid he might tell them some one was asking for them. Do you think you could go through and look for them, Miss Manning, if I told you just how they look?”
“Certainly; I was just a-goin’ to propose it. I never have walked through a train while ’twas goin’ jigglety-jiggle, but I guess I can do it. Mebbe it’s against the law to go out of a car while it’s in motion, but if that conductor tries to have me took up it’ll be the worst for him, for I can prove I’m a respectable woman, no matter where I am.”
So showing her utter confidence in Marion by leaving in her charge her traveling-bag and beloved crochet-work, Miss Manning, making wild clutches at the seat-backs as the swaying car threw her from side to side, began her exploring expedition through the train.
It seemed a long time to Marion before she returned, but the moment she re-entered the car her sharp eyes sought the girl’s, and the quick little nod she gave said plainly that she had found the objects of her search.
She was a good deal excited by the part she was playing in the adventure, but she would not be hurried, and, anxious as Marion was to hear all she had to tell, she had to wait till Miss Manning had re-tied her “bunnit,” straightened her shawl, and re-adjusted the overskirt that had been pulled awry by contact with various impediments.