“I don't know,” said Maria.
“I don't know,” said Wollaston, “but it seems to me the best thing to do would be to go directly to a police-office and have the chief of police notified, and set them at work; but then I suppose your father has done that already.”
Maria turned upon him with indignation. “Go to a police-station to find my little sister!” said she. “What would I go there for?”
“Yes, what do you suppose that kid has did?” asked Gladys.
“What would I go there for?” demanded Maria, flashing the light of her excited, strained little face upon the boy.
Maria no longer looked pretty. She no longer looked even young. Lines of age were evident around her mouth, her forehead was wrinkled. The boy fairly started at the sight of her. She seemed like a stranger to him. Her innermost character, which he had heretofore only guessed at by superficial signs, was written plainly on her face. The boy felt himself immeasurably small and young, manly and bold of his age as he really was. When a young girl stretches to the full height of her instincts, she dwarfs any boy of her own age. Maria's feeling for her little sister was fairly maternal. She was in spirit a mother searching for her lost young, rather than a girl searching for her little sister. Her whole soul expanded. She fairly looked larger, as well as older. When they got off the train at Jersey City, she led the little procession straight for the Twenty-third Street ferry. She marched ahead like a woman of twice her years.
“You had better hold up your dress, M'ria,” said Gladys, coming up with her, and looking at her with wonder. “My, how you do race!”
Maria reached round one hand and caught a fold of her skirt. Her new dress was in fact rather long for her. Ida had remarked that morning that she would have Miss Keeler shorten it on Saturday. Ida had no wish to have a grown-up step-daughter quite yet, whom people might take for her own.
The three reached the ferry-boat just as she was about to leave her slip. They sat down in a row midway of the upper deck. The heat inside was intense. Gladys loosened her shabby little sacque. Maria sat impassible.
“Ain't you most baked in here?” asked Gladys.