ELFIE GONE!
“How does it happen,” said Mrs. Abbott, as she carved the roast beef at
dinner, “that there are so many vacant places at the table?”
“I don’t understand it at all,” said Miss Blake. “No one has asked to
be excused, and irregularity at meals has never been a fault of any of
our household.”
“Elfie is missing too,” said Mrs. Abbott, “but she is undoubtedly
up-stairs in the room with Candace.”
“She is in Katie Ashley’s charge for school hours this week,” said Miss
Blake.
“True, but where is Katie? Does any one at the table know where Katie
and the other absent ones are?”
But no one knew, and Mrs. Abbott, with some displeasure expressed on
her face, sent one of the maids up-stairs to search for the absentees,
while the dinner proceeded in uncomfortable silence till interrupted
just as the plates of the first course were being removed by the
entrance of Lily, who ran into the room with a white face, glanced at
Elfie’s vacant place, and cried out apprehensively:
“O, I did hope she might have come back alone! We cannot find her
anywhere!”
“Who are you talking about?” asked Mrs. Abbott, turning very pale and
speaking sternly. “Is it Elfie you cannot find?”
Then Lily, before them all, gave a rapid history of the deliberate
disobedience, their interview with the fortune-teller, and Elfie’s
disappearance.
Mrs. Abbott heard it to the end in silence, but her face looked haggard
and worried as she herself led the way to a thorough search in every
direction. The other S. C. girls had nothing to add to Lily’s story,
but huddled together regretting bitterly, now that it was too late,
their disobedience, which had caused all this trouble.
Inquiries at the station showed that the fortune teller and her sister,
with a man in attendance, took the train at 1:15, but as they did not
get their tickets it could not be learned at what place they would
leave the cars. They reached the station only just in time for the
train, which they boarded instantly. They were loaded down with shawls
and packages, but no one saw a child in their company.
The proprietor of the livery-stable said two ladies who had stopped
a day behind the circus hired a carriage of him, but on meeting a
gentleman friend dismissed him with orders to meet them and take charge
of his carriage at the arrival of the 1:15 train. He was a moment
late, but found his horses and the empty carriage standing back of the
station and the young man just following the ladies into the cars. They
had paid him more than he asked when dismissing him.
It was some hours before another train left, and Mrs. Abbott, in sad
perplexity, went to her old friend Mr. Mason, the bank president, who
was also Addie’s father, who advised telegraphing to Troy to have the
in-coming train searched for the party, which they described as nearly
as possible.
It was not till Mr. Mason spoke incidentally of the girl who brought
the check in the morning that Mrs. Abbott remembered she had not seen
Marion since sending her to him.
Going home again she sought her at once in Candace’s room. The poor
woman had but just learned of Elfie’s disappearance, and her anguish
was pitiful to see. She rose from her bed at once, conquering the pain
that had kept her a prisoner there, and declaring she would go in
search of her child.
“O, where, where was Miss Marion,” she asked, “not to be looking after
my pet?”
It had become certain by that time that Marion had also disappeared,
and, though there was no ground for hoping it, Candace instantly
declared that Marion had gone after her darling.
Mr. Mason and Mrs. Abbott were at the station waiting for the cars when
a telegram was brought to her from the office within the building.