“Oh, I’m so sorry, Felia!” sympathized Nathalie again to the weeping mother. Then, after asking if the town authorities had been notified, she decided to hasten home, knowing that she could not get any one to promise to work for her at that time.
“Oh, it is too bad!” she lamented as she hurried down Main Street. “It does seem as if some one ought to be searching for her now, why the poor child may be injured or something!” Her too vivid imagination pictured her, not down at the bottom of the pond, as mammy had done, but crying piteously of fear and hunger in some lonely place. “I suppose the police in this town will take some hours to get on to the job, as Dick says.” She suddenly paused and her eyes shone with a bright light. She wrinkled her brow thoughtfully a moment as if going over something in her mind, and then with the glad cry, “Oh, I know we can do it—it will be just the thing!” She broke into a run as if her sudden inspiration would escape her if she did not hurry.
With good speed she soon reached the house, hurriedly told her mother what had befallen Rosy and the condition she had found things in at the negro settlement, and then, telling her she would be back in a few moments, she flew post-haste across the road to Mrs. Morrow’s house. Here the Pioneers with eager, expectant faces were all talking animatedly, their brown uniforms, red ties, and broad-brimmed hats suggestive of the good time in store for them.
“Oh, here she comes!” sang out Helen, as she spied Nathalie hastening up the path towards the veranda. “Why, where have you been? We began to think you were not coming.”
“I had to go on an errand for Mother!” Then with glowing eyes she told them of the visit to the colored settlement and about the lost Rosy, the grief of her mother, and how there was no one looking for the child. “Oh, girls,” she ended in a quiver of excitement, “let’s give up the bird-hike for to-day, and see if we cannot find little Rosy!”
CHAPTER IX—SEARCHING FOR ROSY
An oppressive silence followed, while each girl looked blankly at her neighbor. The new Pioneer’s face flushed, and her eager, excited eyes shadowed, as she quickly realized that in her eagerness to follow the law of kindliness she had been too officious. She stood in dismayed embarrassment, the chill of an unpleasant surprise benumbed her. With a faint hope she turned her eyes appealingly towards Helen, surely her level head and kind heart would prompt her to second her. Helen caught the look and smiled faintly.
Edith, who was always the first one to either second or down a proposition, broke the silence by exclaiming in an aggrieved tone, “Why, the idea, Nathalie Page! we can’t give up the bird-hike, we’ve all brought our lunches!”
“I should say not,” interposed Lillie Bell with flashing eyes. “Why, it would take the whole morning, and there could be no hike for to-day, and next week I can’t go, I—”
“Oh, they have probably found the child by this time!” ventured Barbara North, to Nathalie’s surprise, as she had always found her of a kindly nature.