CHAPTER XXI. HER MOTHER ARRIVES.
Both children regarded the strange lady with breathless interest when the lawyer seated her in the room. They silently classed her among the rich, handsome and powerful people of the earth. She had what in later years they learned to call refinement, but at that date they could give it no name except niceness. When Grandma Padgett and the landlord's wife were summoned to the room, she grew even younger and more elegant in appearance, though her face was anxious and her eyes were darkened by crying.
“This is Mrs. Tracy from Baltimore,” said the lawyer. “She was in Chicago yesterday, and I telegraphed for her a half-hour or so before the child was taken out of the house. She came as far as Indianapolis, and found no Pan Handle train, this morning, so she was obliged to get a carriage and drive over. Mrs. Sebastian, will you be kind enough to set out something for her to eat as soon as you can? She has not thought of eating since she started. And Mrs.—what did I understand your name to be?”
{Illustration: “THIS IS LORD'S DAY,” SAID WILLIAM SEBASTIAN.}
“Padgett,” replied the children's guardian.
“Yes; Mrs. Padgett. Mrs. Padgett, my client is hunting a lost child, and hearing this little girl was with you some days, she would like to make some inquiries.”
“But the child's taken clear away!” exclaimed Grandma Padgett.
“If you drove out from Injunop'lis,” said the Quaker's wife, “you must have met the show-wagon on the 'pike.”
“The show-wagon took to a by-road,” observed the lawyer. “We have men tracking it now.”
“I knew it wasn't right for them to carry off that child,” said the Quaker's wife, “and if I'd tended the door they wouldn't carried her off.”