And when the Shadow reached the park, there, on a knoll beside a barberry bush, he found Littlegirl lying fast asleep.
In a great flutter he questioned the Earth.
“Listen,” said Shadow, “what are you thinking of? Here is the child who was to work the miracle and make the City turn into a woman. And she is lying alone in the park. And I’m coming on and I’ll have to make it all dark and frighten her. What does this mean?”
But the Earth, who is closer to people than is its Shadow, merely said:—
“Wait, Shadow. I am listening. I can hear the speeding of many feet. And I think that the miracle has begun.”
It was true that all through the City there was the speeding of many feet, and on one errand. Wires and messengers were busy, automobiles were busy, blue-coated men were busy, and all of them were doing the same thing: Looking for Littlegirl. Busiest of all was the Blue Linen Lady, who felt herself and nobody else responsible for Littlegirl’s loss.
“It is too dreadful,” she kept saying over and over, “I had her with me. She gave me my chance, and I didn’t take it. If anything has happened to her, I shall never forgive myself.”
“That’s the way people always talk afterward,” said the Earth’s Shadow. “Why don’t they ever talk that way before? I’d ask the Uttermost Spaces, but I know they don’t know.”
But the wise Earth only listened and made to flow to the Blue Linen Lady’s heart an old longing. And when they had traced Littlegirl as far as the park—for it seemed that many of the busy Skirts and Coats and Voices had noticed her, only they were so very busy—the Blue Linen Lady herself went into the park, and it was the light of her automobile that flashed white on the glimmering frock of Littlegirl.
Littlegirl was wakened, as never before within her memory she had been wakened, by tender arms about her, lifting her, and soft lips kissing her, many and many a time. And waking so, in the strange, great Dark, with the new shapes of trees above her and tenderness wrapping her round, and an in-the-middle-of-the-night kiss on her lips, Littlegirl could think of but one thing that had happened:—