THE HUE AND CRY
Ruth Kenway's suggestion bore the stamp of common sense, and even the
excited mother of Sammy Pinkney accepted that as a fact. Sammy had been
playing almost exclusively with the little Corner House girls of late
(quite to his anxious mother's satisfaction, be it said) and if Dot was
absent the boy was in all probability with her.
"Well, he certainly cannot have got into much mischief with little
Dorothy along," sighed Mrs. Pinkney, relieved. "But I most certainly
shall punish him when he comes back, for I forbade his leaving the yard
this morning. And I shall tell his father."
This last promise made Tess look very serious. It was the most
threatening speech that the good woman ever addressed to Sammy. Mr.
Pinkney seemed a good deal like a bugaboo to the little Corner House
girls; he was held over Sammy's head often as a threat of dire
punishment. Sammy and his father, however, seemed to understand each
other pretty well.
Sammy had once confided to the little Corner House girls that "We men
have to hang together"; and although he respected his father, and feared
what the latter might do in the way of punishment, the punishment was
usually inflicted by Mrs. Pinkney, after all.
Sometimes when his mother considered that the boy had been
extraordinarily naughty and she told the fact to his father, that wise
man would take his son by the hand and walk away with him. Sammy always
started on one of these walks with a most serious expression of
countenance; but whatever was said to him, or done to him, during these
absences, Sammy always returned with a cheerful mien and with a
pocketful of goodies for himself and something extra nice for his
mother.
Neale O'Neil frequently declared that Mr. Pinkney was one of the wisest
men of his time and probably "put it all over old Solomon. They say
Solomon had a lot of wives," Neale remarked. "But I bet he didn't know
half as much about women and how to handle them as Mr. Pinkney does."
However, to get back to the discovery of the absence of Sammy and Dot.
After Tess had searched the neighborhood without finding any trace of
them, and Agnes had returned from down town, a council was held.
"Why, they did not even take Tom Jonah with them," observed Ruth.
"If they had," said Agnes, almost ready to weep, "we would be sure they
were not really lost."
"Can't you find out at the police station?" suggested Cecile.
"Oh, my! Oh my!" cried Tess, in horror. "You don't s'pose our Dot has
really been _arrested_?"
"Listen to the child!" exclaimed Mrs. Pinkney, kissing her. "Of course
not. The young lady means that the police may help find them. But I do
not know what Sam'l Pinkney would say if he thought the officers had to
look for his son."
Ruth, in her usual decisive way, brooked no further delay. Surely the
missing boy and girl had not gone straight up into the air, nor had they
sunk into the ground. They could not have traveled far away from the
corner of Willow and Main Streets without somebody seeing them who would
remember the fact.
She went to the telephone and began calling up people whom she knew all
about town, and after explaining to Central the need for her inquiries,
that rather tart young person did all in her power to give Ruth quick
connections.
Finally she remembered Mrs. Kranz. Dot and Sammy might have gone to
Meadow Street, for many of their schoolmates lived in the tenements
along that rather poor thoroughfare.
Maria Maroni answered the telephone and she, of course, had news of the
lost children.
"Why, Miss Ruth," asked the little Italian girl into the transmitter,
"wasn't you going on the picnic, too?"
"What picnic!" asked the eldest Corner House girl at the other end of
the wire.
"Mrs. Kranz says Dottie and that little boy were going on a picnic. Sure
they were! I sold them crackers and cheese and a lot of things. And my
father sent you a basket of fruit like he always does. We thought you
and Miss Agnes would be going, too."
Ruth reported this to the others; but the puzzle of the children's
absence seemed not at all explained. Nobody whom Ruth and Agnes asked
seemed to know any picnic slated for this day.
"They must have made it up themselves--all their own selves," Agnes
declared. "They have gone off alone to picnic."
"Where would they be likely to go?" asked Luke Shepard, wishing to be
helpful. "Is there a park over that way--or some regular picnicking
grounds?"
"There's the canal bank," Ruth said quickly. "It's open fields along
there. Sometimes the children have gone there with us."
"I just _know_ Sammy has fallen in and been drowned," declared Mrs.
Pinkney, accepting the supposition as a fact on the instant. "What will
I ever say to Sam'l to-night when he comes home?"
"Well," said Tess, encouragingly, "I guess he won't spank Sammy for
doing that. At least, I shouldn't think he would."
The older folk did not pay much attention to her philosophy. They were
all more or less worried, including Mrs. MacCall and Aunt Sarah. The
latter displayed more trouble over Dot's absence than one might have
expected, knowing the maiden lady's usual unattached manner of looking
at all domestic matters.
Ruth, feeling more responsibility after all than anybody else--and
perhaps with more anxious love in her heart for Dot than the others, for
had she not had the principal care of Dot since babyhood?--could not be
convinced now that all they could do was to wait.
"There must be some way of tracing them," she declared. "If they were
over on Meadow Street somebody must have seen them after they left Mrs.
Kranz's store."
"That is the place to take up their trail, Ruth," Luke said. "Tell me
how to find the store and I'll go down there and make enquiries."
"I will go with you," the eldest Corner House girl said quickly. "I know
the people there and you don't."
"I'll go, too!" cried Agnes, wiping her eyes.
"No," said her sister decisively. "No use in more going. You remain at
home with Tess and Cecile. I am much obliged to you, Luke. We'll start
at once."
"And without your lunch?" cried Mrs. MacCall.
Ruth had no thought for lunch, and Luke denied all desire for the midday
meal. "Come on!" he prophesied boldly, "we'll find those kids before we
eat."
"Oh!" sighed Agnes, "I wish Neale O'Neil had not gone fishing. Then he
could have chased around in the automobile and found those naughty
children in a hurry."
"He would not know where to look for them any more than we do," her
sister said. "All ready, Luke."
They set off briskly for the other side of town. Luke said:
"Wish I knew how to run an auto myself. That's going to be my very next
addition to the sum of my knowledge. I could have taken you out in your
car myself."
"Not without a license in this county," said Ruth. "And we'll do very
well. I _hope_ nothing has happened to these children."
"Of course nothing has," he said comfortingly. "That is, nothing that a
little soap and water and a spanking won't cure."
"No. Dot has never been punished in that way."
"But Sammy has--oft and again," chuckled Luke. "And of course he is to
blame for this escapade."
"I'm not altogether sure of that," said the just Ruth, who knew Dot's
temperament if anybody did. "It doesn't matter which is the most to
blame. I want to find them."
But this was a task not easy to perform, as they soon found out after
reaching Meadow Street. Certainly Mrs. Kranz remembered all about the
children coming to her store that morning--all but one thing. She stuck
to it that Dot had said they were going on a picnic. The word "pirates"
was strange to the ear of the German woman, so having misunderstood it
the picnic idea was firmly fixed in her mind.
Maria Maroni had been too busy to watch which way Dot and Sammy went;
nor did her father remember this important point. After leaving the
store the runaways seemed to have utterly disappeared.
Ruth did not admit this woful fact until she had interviewed almost
everybody she knew in the neighborhood. Sadie Goronofsky and her
brothers and sisters scattered in all directions to find trace of Dot
and Sammy. There was a mild panic when one child came shrieking into
Mrs. Kranz's store that a little girl with a dog had been seen over by
the blacksmith shop, and that she had been carried off on a canalboat.
"Them canalboatmen would steal anything, you bet," said Sadie
Goronofsky, with confidence. "They're awful pad men--sure!"
Luke went down to the blacksmith shop and learned that the horseshoer
knew exactly who the canalboatman in question was. And he knew about the
little girl seen with him as well.
"That's Cap'n Bill Quigg and Louise. She is his twelve year old gal--and
as smart as Bill is lazy. The dog belongs to them. Ornery hound. Wasn't
anybody with them, and the old _Nancy Hanks_, their barge, has gone on
toward Durginville. Went along about the time it showered."
The thunderstorm that had passed lightly over the edge of Milton had
occurred before Ruth and Luke left the Corner House. This news which the
young man brought back from the blacksmith shop seemed not to help the
matter in the least. He and Ruth went over to the canal and asked people
whom they met. Many had seen the canalboat going toward Durginville; but
nobody had spied Sammy and Dot.
Where else could they go with any reasonable hope of finding trace of
the runaways? Sammy and Dot, going directly across the open fields to
the moored canalboat, and getting aboard that craft and into the hold,
their small figures had not been spied by those living or working in the
neighborhood.
The searchers went home, Ruth almost in tears and Luke vastly perturbed
because he could not really aid her. Besides, he was getting very much
worried now. It did seem as though something serious must have happened
to Sammy Pinkney and Dot Kenway.