Priscilla’s spirits rose with every mile that brought her nearer home. Her mother and Hannah watched her shining eyes with satisfaction and listened to the rare sound of her merry chatter as if it had been the sweetest of music. They were as grateful for the change in her as sparrows are when, after a long succession of stormy days, the sun comes out again.

One question rather puzzled and disturbed her mother.

What was to be done about Polly after their return? Priscilla seemed to have forgiven and forgotten their quarrel and was ready and anxious to make up and be friends once more, as Hannah had foretold she would be, but Mrs. Duer could not help remembering that Polly had raised her hand against her darling and, she felt that no one could blame her if she were not willing to trust the child with her again. Priscilla had so tender and compassionate a little heart that she could never harbor ill-will against anybody, but she had barely escaped a dreadful calamity and her mother felt that it would be worse than reckless to run the risk of repeating a danger for which, plainly, Polly was responsible. No; Polly must go, that was clear, and Priscilla would doubtless soon cease to miss her, once she was at home again.

But as they drew nearer and nearer their journey’s end it was easy to see for whom Priscilla’s heart had been longing, and for what she had been homesick. She thought and talked of nothing but Polly and her usually silent little tongue fairly ran over with eager, anxious chatter.

“S’posing Polly were to be at the station to meet them!” “S’posing Polly didn’t know they were coming and would be so surprised she’d jump right up and down with gladness!” There seemed to be no end to the delightful things Priscilla amused herself by “s’posing.”

“When we get home I want to speak to Polly the first thing,” she confided to Hannah. “I have something I very p’rtic’larly want to say to her.”

But when the train at last drew up beside the station and the travelers stepped out upon the platform, Priscilla’s happy smile faded to a wistful shadow of itself, for no Polly was awaiting her anywhere about, as she had fondly encouraged herself to “s’pose” might be the case. However, in the pleasant excitement of feeling she was really at home at last, she recovered her good spirits and was as gay and light-hearted as ever during the brisk drive from the depot.

“I guess Polly will be waiting for us at the gate,” she managed to whisper eagerly in Hannah’s ear, between quick little peerings this way and that in the hope of spying her nearer at hand. But the carriage rolled through the gate and up the shady avenue without bringing any waiting Polly into view. Again Priscilla’s expectant smile grew wistful.

“I s’pose, maybe, she’s waiting for us at the door,” she murmured still hopefully, and kept her brown eyes fixed resolutely before her so that, when the carriage should swing around the sweep in the driveway and under the porte-cochÊre, she might be the first to call out the glad “Hello!” that would show Polly she was sorry and wanted to be friends again; but only Theresa stood upon the steps to receive them, and Polly was nowhere to be seen.

Priscilla suffered herself to be lifted out of the carriage without a word. Her chin was quivering a little but she did not cry. Perhaps Polly was hiding somewhere and meant to surprise her by springing out unexpectedly to welcome her with a kiss and a hug.

Priscilla was naturally very timid, but in her eagerness to find Polly she braved the shadowy staircases and lonely dim halls without a moment’s hesitation.

“P’raps she’s in the nursery and won’t come down ’cause I was horrid and wouldn’t see her before I went away. Of course that’s it! Why didn’t I think of it before?” Priscilla reasoned, and she ran along the upper hall crying, “Polly! Polly! I’m home again! Where are you, Polly dear?”

But no jolly little figure came bounding forward in answer to her call and the only sounds to be heard were those of her own quick-coming breaths and the solemn ticking of the big clock in the corner. Then the dimness, the quiet and the sense of her loneliness and disappointment overcame Priscilla and with a long, quivering sob she cast herself face downward upon the nursery-couch, where she and Polly had played so many happy times and cried the bitterest tears she had ever shed.

Down-stairs all was in the greatest confusion, for it seemed that no one was able to inform Mrs. Duer where Polly was. Lawrence and Richard, the coachman and groom, declared they had not seen her near the stables all day: “And she never missed a morning all the time you were gone, madam, to come out and give Oh-my an apple or a lump of sugar.”

Theresa declared she had served the child her breakfast but hadn’t had a glimpse of her since.

“I was so busy getting the place in order, to receive you, that I hadn’t a minute to think of Polly,” she confessed. “And when she didn’t come in to luncheon I didn’t feel I could spare the time to hunt for her.”

“And yet I left her especially in your charge,” Mrs. Duer said, in stern rebuke.

Poor Hannah, tired as she was, set out immediately with Lawrence and Richard to scour the grounds, while Mrs. Duer bade the household servants search the house from garret to cellar.

She herself hastened up to the nursery in the hope of finding some clue to the mystery of the child’s disappearance. But all she saw on entering the room was Priscilla crouching on the rug before the nursery-couch and crying her heart out from loneliness and disappointment.

“My dearest, what is it?” asked Mrs. Duer anxiously hastening to her and gathering her up tenderly in her arms.

Priscilla hid her tear-stained face in her mother’s neck. “I want Polly,” she sobbed out brokenly.

“Yes, darling, I know you do,” Mrs. Duer said gently, “and I have no doubt she will be found in a very little while. She was here, safe and well, this morning, and she cannot have wandered far, for I forbade her to go beyond the gates and I cannot believe she has disobeyed me.”

“I have something I must p’rtic’larly tell her right away,” the shaken little voice continued.

“I wonder what it can be?” ventured Mrs. Duer, encouragingly. “Don’t you think you can confide it to mother?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try.”

The big clock in the corner ticked out the seconds with melancholy distinctness. It seemed to Priscilla to be reproachfully repeating: “Pol-ly’s gone! Pol-ly’s gone!” until she could endure it no longer.

“I wanted to tell Polly I was sorry,” she gasped in a difficult whisper.

“Sorry for what, dearest?”

“The day I fell—I—I was horrid to Polly,” went on the penitent little voice in a broken undertone. “I—I wouldn’t play with her first-off when she wanted me to and then, when she went out to Pine Lodge, I was lonesome and I wanted her, and so I went there too. I didn’t have my doll and we couldn’t play. I asked her to get it ’cause I was tired. She was tired too; she had a big bump on her head that hurt her; she let me feel it thump. But—I teased her to get my doll; I kept right on teasing.—She would have gone then but you’d told her not to leave me alone there and then—and then—I felt wicked in my heart and wanted to be horrid and—I thought it would frighten her if I got up on the bench where you said I mustn’t. She begged me to get down—but I leaned over—just to tease her. And I said I’d get down if she’d fetch my doll. At last, after ever so long, she said she’d go and then I got down.—But—but I guess she was ’xasp’rated, I had teased her so, and leaned over the edge when she said I shouldn’t, and wouldn’t even let her hold on to my skirt and—and—so—she shook me. She ’most cried the minute she had done it and asked me to forgive her and make up. But I wouldn’t.—I don’t know why I was so horrid;—it was awful—it choked me—but I couldn’t vanquish it—I just kept on teasing her to get my doll.—Then she did.—While she was gone I tried to think of a way to pay her back for shaking me—and by and by I thought of one.—When she brought the doll I just walked over to the bench and got up on it again. I did it to pay her back.—She begged me not to—and I did—and then—I fell—and it wasn’t Polly’s fault and—I—I want Polly!”

And this was how Priscilla fought her first great battle with her conscience and won. Her mother, hearing her heart flutter and bound, and feeling the cold drops of moisture on her temples, knew that the struggle had been a fierce one and loved her all the better for it.

And somehow Priscilla had never felt so happy in all her life, in spite of her unhappiness, as she did in that moment when her beautiful young mother, of whom she had always stood a little in awe, kissed her tenderly on her forehead and said: “God bless my little girl for being honest enough to tell the truth and brave enough to confess her fault,” and they had both cried and clung together and felt that they were very fast friends indeed.

But in the meantime it was growing darker every moment and still Polly had not been found. Hannah came hastening up to report that no trace of her had been discovered anywhere out of doors and Theresa had no better news to tell of their search within.

“She was all right and well this morning, I do assure you, madam,” the maid insisted. “I served her breakfast with my own hands. She seemed terribly upset, I will own, when you went away, but after a while it seemed as if she had found something to take up her mind for she was more contented-like. Since she’s been missing it has occurred to me that perhaps she intended to run away and that she was planning how to do it all the time I thought she was just amusing herself with books and so on. I never was the prying kind, but I wonder if it would be a good idea to look around and see if her things are all here—her clothes, I mean, and such-like.”

Mrs. Duer thought it would be an extremely good idea and Hannah made haste to the little girl’s bureau drawers and closet. A great lump rose in her throat as she discovered that the very finest and daintiest of her garments—the ones Polly had liked the best—were missing from their customary places.

But Theresa was fingering the articles on Polly’s little table in the corner, pulling the books and papers about and rummaging among them busily. Suddenly she gave a start and exclamation:

“It seems to me I remember that there used to be a little iron bank here somewhere, full of loose change, wasn’t there, Hannah?”

“Yes! Why?” responded Hannah almost harshly.

“Because it isn’t here now,” replied Theresa.

“It was Polly’s own bank,” Priscilla whispered in her mother’s ear. “The money belonged to her, to do what she liked with. When Cousin Cissy gave her some or Uncle Arthur did, or anybody, Polly always put it in her bank, and she said she meant to buy things with it for some people she knew; and I guess she meant us.”

While Priscilla was talking Theresa, with a great ado, pulled open the little drawer of the table. It came out with a jerk and there, directly before her, lay the broken fragments of the bank. Without a word she gathered them up and brought them to her mistress. They seemed convincing proof that Polly had deliberately planned to go away (without doubt back to the city) and had taken her savings to pay her fare.

Mrs. Duer rose. “That is enough, Theresa,” she said sadly. “Put those pieces back where you found them, please, and then you can go down-stairs. I shall not need you here any longer.”

She was anxious to be alone with Hannah.

As soon as the maid had left the room she turned to the nurse exclaiming: “Oh, Hannah, it seems impossible! I can’t believe it of the child. She promised me faithfully not to go beyond the gates and I trusted her perfectly.”

Hannah hesitated. “Polly thought you didn’t trust her,” she said quietly. “It was only the night before we left home that she told me you had said you couldn’t trust her any more. If it’s true that she has deliberately gone away I think there’s no doubt but that’s why. But I’m not ready to believe she’s run off so without a word of thanks for all the love and kindness and generosity’s been shown her in this house. It wouldn’t be like her. I won’t believe it till I must.”

But Mrs. Duer’s thoughts were traveling back to the last time she had seen the little girl: that afternoon in the living-room when she had asked her about Priscilla’s accident, when she had told her she could not trust her any more. She remembered the hurt look in Polly’s eyes and the quiver in her voice as she asked to be permitted to go back to the store where—where—(it was all clear to her now) where they did trust her, where they thought she was “a good cash-girl.” Like a flash the whole thing explained itself to Mrs. Duer. Polly had gone back to the city, back to her old place. In a few hurried words she told Hannah of what she was thinking:

“I shall telephone at once to the station-master and learn if she has taken any of the trains from the depot to-day and if she has I will go to the city the first thing in the morning and find her, wherever she is, and bring her back.”

Priscilla’s tears had ceased. The thought of Polly alone, far off, somewhere in the distant, dangerous darkness, made her heart stand still with horror. She followed her mother and Hannah silently down-stairs and stood by trembling while the telephone bell tinkled merrily and the dreadful news came back over the wire that Polly had indeed taken the earliest morning train that very day for the city and that if there was anything wrong the station-master was very sorry, but he had thought it was all right to let her go, although, now he came to think of it, he had wondered at her being permitted to take such a long journey alone. The ticket-seller said he remembered her particularly, “because she seemed such a young one to be shifting for herself.” He recollected that she had bought a ticket to town, but not back, and had paid for it with a lot of loose change—“quarters and dimes and nickles and such.” If he could do anything for Mrs. Duer she’d oblige him by letting him know.

But even now Hannah would not believe that Polly had run away.

“Why, don’t you see, Mrs. Duer, it’s impossible,” she exclaimed in real distress. “Polly isn’t disobedient nor ungrateful nor disloyal and she’d be all of these and more if she’d gone off so and left us without a word. There must be some way of explaining it.”

But Mrs. Duer was not so sure. She felt terribly anxious and harassed. What could she say to Polly’s sister if anything had happened to the child? What could she do?

Well, certainly nothing to-night. She would take the earliest train to the city in the morning and in the meantime they must all get what rest they could. Priscilla looked white and worn and ought to be put to bed as soon as she had eaten her supper. But Priscilla could only choke over her food and beg to be “excused” from the table. It was a sad ending to a day that had begun so merrily.

And how was Polly faring all this time?

The journey in the train proved to be tediously long and dreary. Quite, quite different from the one she had taken last, when she and Priscilla had passed over the same road some months ago, in coming to the country. After a while she began to feel faint and sick from the motion of the cars and, though she did not realize it, from hunger. The cold milk and hard biscuits of her breakfast were all Theresa had provided her with, so her usual luncheon time came and went and she had nothing to eat. Her empty little stomach rebelled. But she had no thought for herself, her mind and heart were brimful of sister, while the train that was carrying her to the city where sister lay sick—worse—seemed to do no more than slowly crawl. The wheels refused to grind out pleasant tunes, the hot sun blazed viciously through the window next which she sat and the dust and smoke and cinders blew in and settled upon her until she was covered with grime and grit.

Put at last the end of the journey was reached. Polly took up her heavy, cumbersome bundle and stumbled blindly out into the vast, busy station, amid a babel of voices and a hurrying, struggling press of passengers. She pushed forward in the thickest of the crowd and presently found herself in the street, almost deafened by the clang and clatter of trolley cars, the shouts of eager hackmen and the piercing cries of shrill-voiced newsboys. The midday sun glared blindly into her eyes and beat pitilessly upon her burning cheeks. She looked about her in dismay, for she did not know her way about this part of town and, for the first time in her life, the confusion of the city terrified her. Theresa had bade her speak to no one and so she did not venture to ask her way. Tugging wearily at her bulky burden she, somehow, got past the line of shouting hackmen standing about the station steps, and managed to cross the street. People pushed and jostled her; draymen, with rough, hoarse voices, ordered her out of the way, and motormen clanged their bells to warn her off the track. She stumbled blindly along, hardly knowing where she set her feet and really wandering straight in the wrong direction. It seemed to her that she was forgotten and forsaken by all the world.

She had known her way to and from the store and around and about the streets near Priscilla’s house, but here she was all astray. She stood still and tried to recall Theresa’s directions for reaching the hospital: “You go through the station and up Madison Avenue for a while and there you are!”

She had left the station far, far behind and Madison Avenue was nowhere within sight.

The twine that Theresa had fastened about her bundle and that had threatened to break from the time she started out, gave way with a snap. She would have to gather up the loose ends and knot them as best she could to prevent her clothes from strewing the pavement. While she was bungling awkwardly over this, balancing the bundle unsteadily against her knee, some one ran heavily against her and in an instant her bundle was on the sidewalk. She dared not turn her head or look around for she felt pretty sure that whoever had jostled her had done it “on purpose,” since there was no crowd here and the street was wide. But the next instant she heard a shrill whistle, a coarse laugh and then a rough voice crying jeeringly:

“My eyes! But if this ain’t a go! Blest if here isn’t the fine young lady that lives on the Avenoo! The lady that ran away with my papers one day along las’ spring! Hi, though, you don’t get off so easy this time, sis! I owes you one an’ I’m honest, I am. When I owes, I pays, see?”

She turned her head, lifted her eyes and stared straight into the mischievous, leering face of her old enemy—the newsboy.