THE DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING.
"THERE! You are ready at last!" said Mrs. Sherman, as she finished
buttoning Lloyd's gloves, and fastened the jewelled clasp of her long
party cloak. She had come over to help the Little Colonel dress for the
Butterfly Luncheon at Anna Moore's.
Feeling very elegant in her unusual party array, Lloyd surveyed herself
in the mirror with a satisfied air, and sat down beside Allison to wait
for the carriage that Mrs. Moore had promised to send for them. Mrs.
Walton was tying Kitty's sash, and in the next room Elise was buzzing
around like an excited little bee.
"Hold still! Do now!" they heard Milly say, impatiently. "I'll never get
the tangles brushed out of your curls, and the others will go off and
leave you, and you'll have to miss the party."
Presently there was a long protesting wail from Elise. "Oh, Milly, what
did you put that ribbon on my hair for? It isn't pink enough to match
my stockings."
"There's scarcely any difference at all in the shades," answered Milly.
"Sure it would take a microscope to tell, even if they were side by
side, and your head is too far away from your heels for anybody to
notice."
"Oh, but it won't do at all!" cried Elise, breaking away from her to run
into the next room. "See, mamma, they don't match." In her eagerness
Elise leaned over, bending herself like a little acrobat, till the pink
bow on her hair was on a level with the pink silk stockings.
"There's barely a shade difference," laughed Mrs. Walton. "The
difference is so slight that nobody will notice it unless you expect to
double up occasionally like a jack-knife and call attention to it."
"Of course I don't expect to do that," said Elise, with such a funny
little air of injured dignity that her mother caught her up with a hasty
kiss. "You're a dear little peacock, even if you do think too much of
your fine feathers. But you can't stop to make a fuss about your ribbons
now. It would be making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Run back to Milly
for your hat. I hear the carriage stopping out in front."
"What a lot of things I'll have to write about in my next letter to the
girls," thought Lloyd, as they rolled along in the carriage a few
minutes later. "Joyce and Betty will like to hear about the general's
home and all the interesting things in it, and Eugenia will enjoy this
part of my visit most."
[Illustration: THE BUTTERFLY CARNIVAL.]
It was with a view to impressing Eugenia with the elegance of her
friends, that Lloyd noticed every detail of the beautiful luncheon. She
intended that Eugenia should hear about it all. Gay butterflies, so
lifelike that one could not believe that human hands had made them, were
poised everywhere, on the flowers, the candle-shades, the curtains. The
menu cards were decorated with them, the fine hand-painted china bore
swarms of them around their dainty rims, and even the ices were moulded
to represent them. The little hostess herself, fluttering around among
her guests as gracefully as if she too were a winged creature, wore a
gauzy dress of palest blue, embroidered in butterflies, and there were
butterflies caught here and there in her golden curls.
The Little Colonel could scarcely eat for admiring her. She felt very
elegant and grown up to be the guest at such an entertainment, and as
she took her place at the table between Malcolm and Rob, she wished
with all her heart that Eugenia could peep in and see her.
It was time to start to the Butterfly Carnival almost immediately when
luncheon was over, and again Lloyd felt very elegant and grown up
rolling along in the carriage to the matinee. Mrs. Moore ushered the
party into the box she had taken for Anna and her little friends, and
more than one person in the audience turned to ask his neighbour, "Who
are those lovely children? Did you ever see such handsome boys? They
have such charming manners. It is like a scene from some old
court-play." The Little Colonel, sitting beside Anna, with the two
little knights leaning forward to talk to her, to pick up her fan, or
adjust her lorgnette, was all unconscious that any one in the audience
was watching her admiringly, but she wished again that Eugenia could see
her.
When the curtain went up the scene on the stage was so absorbing that
she forgot Eugenia. She forgot where she was, for the play carried her
bodily into fairy-land. The queen of the fairies was there with her
star-tipped wand and all her spangled court, and Lloyd looked and
listened with breathless attention, while the naughty Puck played pranks
on all the butterflies, and, finally catching them at play in a
moonlighted forest, took all the gauzy-winged creatures captive. It was
as entrancing as looking into a living fairy tale, and when at last the
queen released the prisoners with a wave of her star-tipped wand, and to
the soft notes of the violins, the butterflies danced off the stage,
Lloyd drew a long breath and came down to earth with a sigh. She could
have listened gladly for hours more.
But the curtain was down, the people were rising all over the house, and
Keith was holding her party cloak for her to slip into. Mrs. Moore
turned to Allison.
"Elise is wild to see behind the scenes," she said. "I am going to keep
her with me a little while. Your cousin Malcolm says that he and Keith
can take you home in their carriage with Lloyd and Kitty. So I'll send
Anna and Rob home in mine and wait here until it comes back. Tell your
mother I'll take good care of Elise and bring her home as soon as I
attend to my little protegés behind the scene."
Many of the children who had taken part in the performance were from the
free kindergarten, and Elise, holding fast to Mrs. Moore's hand, watched
the transformation behind the scenes, from gauzy wings to gingham gowns,
with wondering eyes.
"It is like when Cinderella lost her glass slipper," she said. "The
clock struck twelve, and her silks turned to rags."
All the glitter and glory of fairy-land had disappeared with the
footlights. In the wintry light of the late afternoon, some of the faces
were pitifully thin and wan.
"Here are three little butterflies that must go back home and be grubs
again," said Mrs. Moore, as she beckoned to the children whom she had
promised to take home in her carriage. Elise looked at them, wondering
if it could be possible that they were the same children, who, fifteen
minutes before, had looked so radiantly beautiful in their spangled
costumes on the stage. They were shy little things who could scarcely
find words to answer Mrs. Moore's questions, but they seemed to enjoy
the drive in the warm closed carriage, behind the team of prancing bays.
Elise chatted on gaily, telling Mrs. Moore how much she had enjoyed the
carnival, how she had admired the fairy queen, and how she longed for a
real live fairy. She had looked for them often in the morning-glories
and the lily-bells. If she could find one maybe it would tell her where
to look for Dot.
Presently they turned into a side street among unfamiliar
tenement-houses, and paused at an alley entrance.
"I am going to the top of the stairs with the children," said Mrs.
Moore, preparing to step out of the carriage. "I want to inquire about
the baby, who is sick. I'll be back in a moment, Elise."
As the carriage door closed behind her she spoke to the coachman. "Wait
here a moment, Dickson." The man on the box touched his hat and then
turned his fur collar higher around his ears. There was a cold wind
whistling through the alley. Elise pressed her face against the glass
and looked out into the wintry street. Mrs. Moore's moment stretched out
into five. The baby up-stairs was worse, and she was making a list of
the many things it needed for its comfort.
There was little of interest to watch from the carriage window. Few
people were passing along the narrow pavement, and Elise wondered
impatiently why Mrs. Moore did not come. Presently, down the street came
a ragged child with its arm held up over its eyes, sobbing and sniffling
as it shuffled along in a pair of wornout shoes many sizes too large for
its little feet.
Elise's heart gave a great thump, and she started forward eagerly.
"Molly's little lost sister!" she exclaimed aloud. "It must be, for she
looks just like the girl in the picture. Oh, I must call her!"
She was fumbling at the knob of the carriage door, but before she could
get it open, the child turned and started up the dirty alley, still
sobbing aloud, with her arm over her face.
"Oh, I must call her back," thought Elise. "Everybody will be so glad if
she is found. I mustn't let her get away."
It took all her strength to turn the knob, but with another desperate
wrench she got the door open, and climbed out to the pavement. The
coachman, half asleep in his great fur collar and heavy lap-robes, did
not hear the tap of the little pink boots, as she ran up the dark alley
between the high, rickety buildings, with their bad smells and dirty
sewers.
"Oh, she is going so fast!" panted Elise. "I'll never catch up with
her!" The pretty pink boots were wet and snowy now, the silk stockings
splashed with muddy water. Her big velvet hat was tipped over one eye
and her curls were blowing in tangles over the wide collar of her
fur-trimmed cloak. But forgetting all about her fine feathers, she ran
on, around corners, into strange passages, across unfamiliar streets,
following the flutter of a tattered gown. All of a sudden she paused,
looking around in bewilderment. The child she was following had
disappeared.
With a bitter sense of disappointment swelling in her little heart, she
turned to go back to the carriage, and then stood still in bewilderment.
She could not tell which way she had come. She was lost herself! For a
few minutes the little pink boots trudged bravely on, then the tears
began to gather in her big black eyes.
"They'll feel so bad at home," she thought, "when they hunt and hunt and
can't find me anywhere. Oh, what if I'd stay lost, and get to look all
ragged and dirty like Dot, and just have to stand in a corner and cry.
If there was any nice stores along here, I'd go in and ask the man to
send me home, but these places look so dreadful I'm afraid."
She was in a disreputable part of the town, where second-hand clothing
stores and pawn-shops were crowded in between saloons and cheap
restaurants, and she dared not venture into any of them to ask for help.
Little as she was, she felt that she was safer on the streets than
inside those crowded, dirty quarters, where half-drunken negroes and
coarse, brawling white men quarrelled and swore in loud tones.
"It's the saloons that brought all the trouble to Molly and Dot,"
thought Elise, shrinking away from a group of noisy loafers, as they
straggled out of one. "They made their father mean and their mother die
and their grandmother go crazy and them lose each other. They're worse
than wild beasts, and I'm afraid of 'em. Maybe if I walk far enough I'll
come to a nice policeman, but I'm so tired now." Her lip quivered as she
whispered the words. "Oh, it seems as if I'd drop! And I'm so cold I am
nearly frozen."
As she walked on, across her way an electric arch suddenly shot its cold
white light into the street. Then another and another appeared, and as
far as she could see in any direction the streets were brilliantly
illuminated.
"Oh, it's night!" she sobbed. "I'll freeze to death before morning if
somebody doesn't come and find me."
Still she dragged on, growing more tired and frightened at every step,
until she could walk no longer. At the end of a long block she sat down
on a doorstep, and huddled up in one corner out of the wind. A dismal
picture came to her mind of the little match-seller in Hans Andersen's
fairy tales. The little match-seller who had frozen to death on
Christmas eve, on the threshold of somebody's happy home.
"She had a box of matches to warm herself with," sobbed Elise. "I
haven't even that. Oh, it's awful to be lost!"
With the tears trickling down her face she pictured to herself the grief
of the family in case they should never find her.
"Mamma will stand in the door and look out into the dark and call and
call, but her little Elise will never answer. And Allison and Kitty will
feel so bad that they won't want to play. They'll divide my things
between them to remember me by, and for a long time it'll make them cry
whenever they see my dolls and books, or my place at the table, or my
little wicker chair in the library, that I'll never sit in any more.
Ranald won't cry, 'cause he's a captain and he's brave. But he'll be
just as sorry. Oh, I wish Ranald wasn't out in the country! He could
find me if he was at home."
It was growing colder and colder on the doorstep. The child's teeth
chattered and her lips were blue. Still she sat there, until an
evil-looking man in the next house slouched out on to the street with a
lean spotted dog at his heels. Suddenly, for no reason that Elise could
discover, for she did not know that he was half drunk, he turned and
kicked the poor beast, cursing it violently. It shrank away, yelping
with pain. Seeing that the man was coming toward her, Elise sprang up in
terror, and with one frightened glance over her shoulder, darted around
the corner. Once out of his sight, she stopped running, but fear kept
her moving, and she walked wearily on and on. Every step carried her
farther away from home.
Through unwashed windows she could see the yellow lamplight streaming
over dingy rooms. Most of the sights were unattractive, but in one
house, cleaner than the rest, she saw a crowd of clamouring children
seated around a supper-table, all reaching their spoons and plates
toward a big steaming platter in the middle. It reminded her that she
was hungry herself, and she lingered a moment, looking wistfully in at
the cheerful scene. Then on she started again. Once she stumbled and
fell in the slush of a snowy crossing, but scrambled bravely up again,
walking on and on.
Meanwhile Allison, Kitty, and the Little Colonel, who had gone ahead in
the carriage with the boys, had stopped at Klein's for a box of candy,
and at a book store for a dissected game they had been discussing at the
luncheon. When they reached Mrs. Walton's, Malcolm sent the carriage
home, and both the boys went into the house with the girls.
"Tell mamma we'll come up-stairs in a few minutes and tell her all about
the carnival," said Allison to the maid who opened the door.
The five children went into the library with their candy and game, and
Mrs. Walton, busy with many letters, did not notice how Allison's few
minutes lengthened out, until it grew so dark that she had to lay down
her pen. As she did so, a carriage drove rapidly up to the house, Mrs.
Moore hurried up the steps, and there was a hasty dialogue at the door
between her and Allison.
Mrs. Walton did not hear the frightened cry, "Oh, mamma! Elise is lost!"
that went up from Allison. And impetuous Kitty, hearing no answer, and
feeling that she must summon help in some way, began beating madly on
the bells of Luzon, as if she were trying to call out the whole fire
department.
As the clangour startled her, Mrs. Walton's first thought was that the
house must be on fire, and she hurried out to the head of the stairs and
looked over the bannister. Kitty was still beating on the bells with an
umbrella that she had snatched from the rack.
"Stop, Kitty!" she called. "Tell me what is the matter?"
"Elise is lost!" repeated Allison, and Mrs. Walton, with a white face,
hurried down to hear Mrs. Moore's explanation.
She had been detained some time in the tenement-house, listening to the
tale of woe that the sick baby's mother poured out to her; but she had
felt no uneasiness about Elise, knowing that the foot-stove in the
carriage would keep her warm and comfortable. When she came down, to her
utter amazement the carriage door stood open, and the child was gone.
The sleepy coachman, who roused himself from his cold doze when he heard
her coming, was as surprised as she, and declared he had not heard the
carriage door open or the child slip out. He had no idea what could have
become of her. They made inquiries of people all along the block, but
nobody had seen a child answering to the description of Elise. Then Mrs.
Moore thought that the child must have grown tired of waiting, and for
some reason had started to walk home. She had driven out to the house
with the hope that she might find her there, or might overtake her on
the way.
Mrs. Walton acted quickly. "Telephone to your father, Malcolm," she
cried, "and to the police station. Oh, my poor baby, out in the cold
streets with night coming on. I must look for her without losing a
minute."
She started up the stairs to call Milly to help her dress for the
search. "Get my furs," she called, "and my heaviest coat. It will be a
cold night." But Malcolm stopped her.
"Don't go, Aunt Mary," he cried. "Papa is on his way here now, and we
boys will go in your place. The policemen are being notified all over
the city, and it will do more good for you to stay here ready to answer
any questions that may come."
"I'll wait until Mr. MacIntyre comes," said Mrs. Moore, "so that I can
take him straight back to that tenement district if he thinks best to
go."
While they were still standing, an anxious little group in the hall, Mr.
MacIntyre came in, and after a hurried consultation he and Mrs. Moore
drove in one direction, and the boys started in another.
None of them like to remember the three hours that followed. The news
spread like wild-fire, and the telephone bell rang constantly with
friendly messages. Each time they hoped that some one of the searching
party was calling them up, but each time they were disappointed. At
intervals one of the girls stole to the front door to look out into the
night and listen. Every voice made them start, every footstep. Every
roll of carriage wheels along the avenue made them hold their breath in
suspense until it had passed.
Presently, Kitty, leaving her mother at the telephone, and Allison and
Lloyd on the stairs, strolled down to the kitchen, where Milly and the
cook were talking about Charlie Ross and all the children they had ever
heard of who had mysteriously disappeared from home.
"An' it's just the loikes av her they'd be afther taking," said the
cook, wiping her eyes. "She was that pretty wid her long currls, an'
eyes shparklin' loike black dimonts, an' her swate little mouth wid its
smile fit for a cherub. I moind the very last toime I saw her. Only this
afthernoon she coom down here to show me her foine clothes she was
wearin' to the parrty. There's no doubt in me moind but that somebody's
stolen her on account av them same illigent clothes. Mebbe they think
there'll be a big reward offered. Bless the two little pink shoes av
her! It'll be a sorry day for this house if they niver coom walking into
it again."
Kitty stole out of the kitchen cold with this new horror, and went back
to whisper it to Allison and Lloyd, as they sat on the stairs ready to
spring forward at the first sound of coming footsteps.
"Now if it had been Allison who was lost," thought Mrs. Walton, "she
could have found her way home without any difficulty. She is such a
sensible, womanly child, always to be trusted for doing the right thing
in the right place. Kitty might not act so wisely, but she would bang
ahead and come out all right in the end. She is the kind one might
expect to see come home in almost any style, from a coal cart to a
triumphal car. But my baby Elise is so little and so timid, my heart
aches for her. She will be so sorely frightened."
Dinner was put on the table and carried out again. Nobody could eat, and
as the moments dragged by the girls still sat on the stairs, and the
anxious mother sprang to the telephone at every tinkle of the bell,
praying for a hopeful message from the police-station.
Elise, stumbling on down strange streets, exhausted, hungry, and cold,
stopped on a street corner and looked around her. She had strayed down
among the warehouses now, and the little feet, numb with cold, were too
tired to go much farther. Down here few people were passing. A big
tobacco warehouse, looming up tall and dark above her, made her feel so
tiny and lost, that the last bit of her courage ebbed away, and she
began to sob aloud.
Out of the shadow just ahead a man was coming toward her. So tall and
broad-shouldered he looked, that he seemed a giant to her terrified
eyes. She put her little gloved hands over her eyes to shut out the
sight, and crouched close against the wall, her baby heart fluttering
like a frightened bird's.
On he came, with slow, heavy tread, his footsteps ringing through the
silent street with a strange metallic echo. As he passed out from the
black shadow of the warehouse, into the light of the street-crossing,
Elise peeped between her fingers again, and then smiled through her
tears. It was a big, burly policeman.
The next instant she was running toward him, calling, "Oh, Mister
Policeman, I'm lost! _Please_ take me home!"
It was a safe haven she had run into. The policeman had just come from
home to go on his beat, and in a little cottage not many blocks away
were three children who were still in his thoughts. They had followed
him to the door to swarm over him and kiss him, and had called after him
down the snowy street, "Good night, daddy!" The childish voices were
still ringing in his ears.
As tenderly as if she had been one of his own, he lifted Elise in his
strong, fatherly arms, wiped her tear-stained face, and began to
question her. She told him her name, but in her confusion could not
remember the name of the street where she lived.
It was the work of only a moment to carry her into a drug-store around
the corner, ring up headquarters, and report his discovery, and it was
only a few moments after that until they were on an electric car,
homeward bound.
Elise was not the first lost child the big, tender-hearted policeman had
taken home, but he had never had such a royal welcome as the one that
awaited him in the hall when the joyful family met him.
He glanced around him curiously, seeing on every side the relics of
victorious battle-fields, the grim weapons of warfare that stood as mute
witnesses of a brave soldier's life. Beyond in the library he caught a
glimpse of the portrait, the flag, and the sword, and then suddenly
realised in whose presence he stood.
"Don't mention it, madam," he said, awkwardly, as the grateful mother
tried to express her thanks. "Don't you know that this is about the
proudest moment of my life? To know that it was _his_ little one I
found, and brought back with her arms around my neck! I read everything
there was about him in the papers (he nodded toward the portrait), and I
always did say he was exactly my idea of a hero. But I never thought
the day would come when I'd stand in his house and see all the things he
touched and looked at."
"That's the way everybody seems to feel about the general," thought the
Little Colonel, glancing from the blue-coated policeman to the portrait.
"It's grand to be a hero."
Elise was too tired and sleepy to talk about her adventures that night,
and asked to be put to bed as soon as she had had the bowl of oyster
soup that was being kept hot for her. When the cook brought it in,
loudly blessing all the saints in the calendar that the child had been
found, all the family remembered that they were hungry and the long
delayed dinner was brought on again.
Elise fell asleep at the table before she finished the soup, but she
opened her drowsy eyes as they were carrying her away to bed to say,
"You all won't feel very bad, will you, if I give you just a teenty
weenty Christmas present this year? 'Cause I want to save most of my
money to buy something nice for that big policeman that brought me home.
Being found is the very best thing in all the world, and I would have
been lost yet, if it hadn't been for him."