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CHAPTER XII
MISSING
Agnes and Cecile had gone down town on a brief shopping trip, and Ruth, with Luke Shepard, was on the wide veranda of the old Corner House.
The great front yard that had been weed grown and neglected when the Kenway sisters and Aunt Sarah had come here to live, was now a well kept lawn, the grass and paths the joint care of Uncle Rufus and Neale O'Neil. For nowadays Neale had time to do little other work than that of running the Kenways' car and working about the old Corner House when he was not at school.
Ruth was busy, of course, with some sewing, for she, like Aunt Sarah, did not believe in being entirely idle while one gossiped. Whenever Ruth looked up from her work there was somebody passing along Main Street or Willow Street whom she knew, and who bowed or spoke to the Corner House girl.
"You have such hosts of friends, Miss Ruth," Luke Shepard said. "I believe you Corner House girls must be of that strange breed of folk who are 'universally popular.' I have rather doubted their existence until now."
"You are a flatterer," Ruth accused him, smiling. "I am sure you and Cecile make friends quite as easily as we do."
"But Grantham is not Milton. There are only a handful of people there."
Ruth bit off a thread thoughtfully.
"Cecile was telling us about 'Neighbor' last evening," she said.
Luke flushed quickly and he looked away from the girl for a moment.
"Oh!" he said. "The poor old gentleman is a character."
"But a very good friend of yours?"
"I am not so sure about that," and Luke tried to laugh naturally. "To tell the truth I'm afraid he's a bit cracked, don't you know."
"Oh, you do not mean that he is really – er – crazy!"
"No. Though they say – somebody has – that we are most of us a little crazy. Neighbor Northrup is more than a little peculiar. Cecile told you he is a woman-hater?"
"Yes. And that he carries his hatred to extremes."
"I should say he does!" exclaimed Luke with vast disgust. "He wants me to promise never to marry."
"Well?"
"My goodness, Miss Ruth! You say that calmly enough. How would you like to be nagged in such a way continually? It's no fun I can assure you."
Ruth laughed one of her hearty, delightful laughs that made even the vexed Luke join in.
"It's like Aunt Sarah," confessed Ruth. "She thinks very poorly of men, and is always advising Agnes and me to 'escape the wrath to come' by joining the spinster sisterhood."
"But you haven't – you won't?" gasped Luke in horror.
At that the oldest Corner House girl laughed again, and Luke found himself flushing and feeling rather shamefaced.
"Oh, well," he said, "you know what I mean. You girls wouldn't really be influenced by such foolishness?"
"Doesn't Neighbor influence you?" Ruth asked him quickly.
"No, indeed. Not even when he tries to bribe me. He can keep his old money."
"But he has been your good friend," the girl said slowly and thoughtfully. "And Cecile says he has promised to do much for you."
"And if he got tiffed he would refuse to do a thing. Oh, I know Neighbor!" growled Luke. "Yet you must not think, Miss Ruth," he added after a moment, "that I do not appreciate what he has already done for me. He is the kindest old fellow alive, get him off the subject of women. But he must have been hurt very much by a woman when he was young – he never speaks about it, but so I surmise – and he cannot forget his hatred of the sex.
"Why," continued the young man, "if it would do him a bit of good – my promising never to marry – any good in the world, there'd be some sense in thinking of it. But it's downright foolishness – and I'll never agree," and the young fellow shook his head angrily.
"If it would cure him of any disease, or the like, I might be coaxed to wear blinders so as not to see the pretty girls at all," and Luke tried to laugh it off again. "But he's wrong – utterly wrong. And old folks should not be encouraged in wrong doing."
"You feel yourself susceptible to the charms of pretty girls, then," suggested Ruth, smiling down at her sewing.
He tried to see her full expression, but could see only the smile wreathing her lips.
"Well, now, Miss Ruth," he said, in defense, "who isn't made happier by seeing a pretty and cheerful face?"
"Some of them say they are made miserable for life by such a sight," Ruth declared demurely. "Or, is it only a manner of speaking?"
"I shall begin to believe you are a man-hater, just as Neighbor is a woman-hater," laughed Luke.
"I have my doubts," confessed Ruth. "But you, Luke, have your own way to win in life, and if this man can and will help you, shouldn't you be willing to give up a little thing like that for policy's sake?"
"A little thing like what?" exclaimed Luke Shepard, rather warmly.
"Why – er – getting married," and Ruth Kenway's eyes danced as she looked at him again for an instant.
"The greatest thing in the world!" he almost shouted.
"You mean love is the greatest thing in the world," said Ruth still demurely smiling. "They say marriage hasn't much to do with that – sometimes."
"I believe you are pessimistic regarding the marriage state."
"I don't know anything about it. Never thought of it, really."
Tess just then came singing through the house, having been to see Miss Ann Titus, the dressmaker, regarding certain dresses that were to be got ready for the little girls to wear to school. She had refused to tell Dot where she was going because one of the dresses was to be a surprise to the smallest Corner House girl.
It needed no seer to discover that Tess had been to see the seamstress. She was a polite little girl and she did not like to break in upon other people's conversation; but she was so chock full of news that some of it had to spill over.
"D'juno, Ruthie, that Mr. Sauer, the milkman got 'rested because he didn't have enough milk in his wagon to serve his customers? The inspector said he didn't have a license to peddle water, and he took him down to the City Hall."
"I had not heard of it, Tess, no," replied her older sister.
"You know that awfully big man, Mr. Atkins – the awfully fat man, you know, who is a lawyer, or something, and always walks down town for exercise, and I s'pose he needs it? He stepped on a banana peel on Purchase Street the other day and almost fell. And if he had fallen on that hard walk I 'most guess he'd've exploded."
"Oh, Tessie!" exclaimed Ruth, while Luke laughed openly.
"And d'juno, Ruthie, that they are going to stop people from keeping pigs inside the city limits? Mr. Con Murphy can't have his any more, either. For the other day a pig that belonged to Hemstret, the butcher, got away and scared folks awful on Deering Street, 'cause he looked as though he had the yaller janders – "
"The what?" gasped her sister, while Luke actually roared.
"The yaller janders," repeated Tessie.
"Do you mean the yellow jaundice? Though how a pig could get such a disease – "
"Maybe. Anyway he was all yellow," Tess went on excitedly. "'Cause some boys took some ock-er-ra paint out of Mr. Timmins' shop – Timmins, the lame man, you know – and painted him and then let him out."
"Painted Mr. Timmins – the lame man?" gasped Luke, in the midst of his laughter.
"No. The pig that I was telling you about," said the small girl. "And Mrs. Bogert says that the next time Bogert goes to the lodge and stays till two o'clock in the morning, she's going home to her mother and take the children with her," and Tess ended this budget of news almost breathless.
Ruth had to laugh, too, although she did not approve of the children carrying such gossip. "I should know you had called upon Miss Ann Titus," she observed. "I hope you didn't hear anything worse than this."
"I heard her canary sing," confessed Tess; "and her little dog, Wopsy, was snoring dreadfully on the sofa. But I guess I didn't hear anything else. Where's Dot?"
"I'm sure I do not know," Ruth said placidly, while Luke wiped his eyes, still chuckling in a subdued way. He saw that he was beginning to hurt Tess' feelings and he was too kind-hearted to wish to do that. "Dot must be somewhere about the house."
Tess went to look for her. Her tender conscience punished her for having spoken to her little sister so shortly when she was starting on her errand to Miss Ann Titus. But how else could she have gotten rid of the "tagging" Dorothy!
Just now, however, Dot seemed to have mysteriously disappeared. Nobody had seen her for more than an hour. Tess went to the fence between their own and the Creamers' yard and "hoo-hooed" until Mabel appeared.
"Ain't seen her," declared that young person, shaking her head. "I tried to get you and her over here a long time ago. My mother let me make some 'lasses taffy, and I wanted you and Dot to come and help. But I had to do it all alone."
"Was it good?" asked Tess, longingly.
"It looked luscious," admitted Mabel scowling. "But that young 'un got at it when it was cooling on the porch and filled it full of gravel. I broke a tooth trying to eat a piece. Want some, Tess?"
"No-o," Tess said. "I guess not. I must find Dot."
But she did not find Dot. She wandered back to the front of the Corner House just as Mrs. Pinkney, rather wild-eyed and disheveled, appeared at the side fence on Willow Street and called to Ruth:
"Have you seen Sammy?"
"Have you seen Dot?" repeated Tess, quite as earnestly.
Ruth was finally shaken out of her composure. She rose from her seat, folding the work in her lap, and demanded:
"What do you suppose has become of them? For of course, if neither Sammy nor Dot can be found, they have gone off somewhere together."
CHAPTER XIII
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.
CHAPTER XIV
AN UNEXPECTED DELIGHT
Sammy and Dot, held prisoners in the hold of the Nancy Hanks, made one painful discovery at least. They learned that without light the time passed with great slowness.
It seemed as though they had been in the dark many hours longer than was actually the case. They sat down side by side and seriously ate all the gumballs. These scarcely satisfied their youthful appetites and, anyway, as Dot said, it must be supper time.
So they ate all of the provisions they could possibly swallow. This attack made fearful inroads upon the stock of provisions. There was no cheese left, few of the animal crackers, and half of the peanut butter was literally "licked up," for they had to use their fingers.
"Ho!" said Sammy, "what's the odds? Fingers was made before spoons."
"Not our fingers, Sammy Pinkney," retorted Dot. "But maybe pirates don't mind about table manners."
Just then her boy comrade was not thinking much about the pirate play. If he had ever felt that he was fitted to rove the seas under the Jolly Roger banner, on a career of loot and bloodshed, he had quite got over the hallucination.
He wanted to go home. He wanted to get Dot home. He had a very decided belief that if his father interviewed him after this escapade something serious would happen to him.
Dot, having recovered from her first fright, and being blessed now with a very full stomach, began to nod. She finally fell fast asleep with her head on Sammy's shoulder. He let her sink down on the boards, putting the sack of potatoes and his jacket under her head for a pillow.
He could not sleep himself. Of course not! He must keep watch all night long. No knowing when the people who had stolen the barge might come and open the hatchway and attack them. Sammy was quite convinced that the man and the girl had illegally taken possession of the canalboat.
He sat beside the softly breathing Dot and listened to certain rustling sounds in the hold, wondering fearfully what they meant. It seemed to him that no rats could make such noises.
"Might be wolves – or snakes," thought the boy, and shivered desperately as he sat in the dark.
The canalboat continued to go its blundering way, and scarcely a sound from out-of-doors reached the little boy's ears. Captain Bill Quigg fell asleep at the rudder arm and only woke up now and then when he came close to losing his pipe from between his teeth. "Lowise" kept close at the heels of the ancient mules, urging them with voice and goad. The hound, misnamed Beauty, slept the unhappy sleep of the flea-ridden dog.
The thunderstorm had cleared the air. It was a beautiful afternoon. For although the children in the hold thought it long past their usual supper-time, it was nothing of the kind.
The air in the hold began to feel close and it made Sammy very sleepy as well as Dot. But the boy was faithful to his trust. He propped his eyelids open and manfully held his watch.
Frightened? Never more so, was Sammy Pinkney. But there was some pluck in the youngster and he felt he must put on a bold front before Dot.
As for the canalboat captain and his "crew," they apparently went the even tenor of their way. Cap'n Bill Quigg was not a very smart man – either physically or mentally. The blacksmith at Milton had told Luke Shepard the truth. Little Louise was the smartest member of the Quigg family, which consisted only of herself, her father and the hound dog, Beauty.
She practically "ran the business." In some way Quigg had become possessed of the old Nancy Hanks and the mules. He plodded back and forth from one end of the canal to the other, taking such freight as he could obtain. If there chanced to be no freight, as on this occasion, he was quite philosophical about it.
Louise worried. She was of a keen, anxious disposition, anyway. She showed it in her face – a hatchet-face at best behind the plentiful sprinkling of freckles that adorned it. But by no means was the face unattractive.
She had had little schooling – only such as she had obtained in winter when the Nancy Hanks was frozen up near a schoolhouse. Then she studied with avidity. Had she ever remained long enough for the teachers really to get acquainted with the shy, odd child, she might have made good friends. As it was, she knew few people well and was as ignorant of life as it was lived by comfortably situated people as a civilized human being could be.
She had begun to scheme and plan for daily existence, and to keep the wolf of hunger away from the door of the canalboat cabin, when she was a very little girl – no older than Dot Kenway herself, in fact. Now she seemed quite grown up when one talked with her, despite her crass ignorance upon most subjects.
This afternoon she paddled on in her bare feet through the mire of the towpath, while the thunder storm passed over and the sun came out again. As she urged on the mules she was planning for a delight that had never yet entered into her crippled life.
She had not urged her father to stop for the farmer's potatoes, whereas on any other occasion she would have insisted upon doing so. A dollar to be earned was an important thing to Louise Quigg.
But she had two half dollars saved and hidden away in the cabin. She had squeezed the sum out of her bits of housekeeping money during the past two months. For all that time the dead walls and hoardings about Durginville had been plastered with announcements of a happening the thought of which thrilled little Louise Quigg to the very tips of her fingers and toes.
When they reached the Bumstead Lock this afternoon there was a chance for the girl to leave the mules grazing beside the towpath while the water rose slowly in the basin, and she could board the boat and talk with Cap'n Bill.
The hound, awakened by her approach, began sniffing around the edge of the forward hatch cover.
"Wonder what Beauty smells there?" Louise said idly. But her mind was on something else. The captain shook his head without much reflection and, now more thoroughly awakened, lit his pipe again.
"I say, Pap!"
"Wal, Lowise?" he drawled.
"We're going to lay up to-night short of the soapworks at Durginville."
"Heh?" he demanded, somewhat surprised, but still drawling. "What for, Lowise?"
"I want to hitch there by the Lawton Pike."
"Lawsy, Lowise! you don't wanter do no sech thing," said Cap'n Bill.
"Yes I do, Pap."
"Too many folks goin' to be there. A slather of folks, Lowise. Why! the circus grounds is right there. This is the day, ain't it?"
"That's it, Pap. I want to see the circus."
"Lawsy, Lowise!" the man stammered. "Circuses ain't for we folks."
"Yes they are, Pap."
"Ain't never been to one in all my life, Lowise," Cap'n Bill said reflectively.
"No more ain't I," agreed the girl. "But I'm goin' to this one."
"You goin'?" he demanded, his amazement growing.
"Yes. And you're goin' too, Pap."
"Git out!" gasped Cap'n Bill, actually forgetting to pull on his pipe.
"Yes, you are," declared Louise Quigg, nodding her head. "I've got the two half dollars. Beauty will stay and mind the boat. I jest got a taste in my mouth for that circus. Seems to me, Pap, I'd jest die if I didn't see it."
"Lawsy, Lowise!" murmured Captain Bill Quigg, and was too amazed to say anything more for an hour.
The Nancy Hanks got through the lock and the mules picked up the slack of the towrope again at Louise's vigorous suggestion. Inside the hold Sammy and Dot both wondered about the stopping of the boat. Dot was awakened by this.
"Sammy," she murmured, "is it morning? Have we been here all night?"
"I – I guess not, Dot. It can't be morning. Are you hungry?"
"No-o. I guess not," confessed the little girl.
"Then it can't be morning," Sammy declared, for what better time-keeper can there be than a child's stomach?
"But aren't they going to let us out – not ever, Sammy?" wailed the little girl.
"Pshaw! Of course they will. Some time they'll want to load up this old boat. And then they'll have to open the door up there in the deck. So we'll get out."
"But – but suppose it should be a long, long time?" breathed Dot, thrilled with the awfulness of the thought.
"We got plenty to eat," Sammy said stoutly.
"Not now we haven't, Sammy," Dot reminded him. "We ate a lot."
"But there's all the potatoes – "
"I wouldn't like 'em raw," put in Dot, with decision. "And you can't catch any fish as you were going to with your hook and line, Sammy. I heard that girl that's with the other pirates," she added, "tell their dog that he couldn't even catch rabbits along the canal. And what do you think, Sammy Pinkney!"
"What?" he asked, drearily enough.
"Why, Sadie Goronofsky said last spring that she had an uncle that was a rabbit. What do you think of that? I never heard of such a thing, did you?"
"He was a rabbit, Dot?" gasped Sammy, brought to life by this strange statement.
"That's just what she said. She said he was a rabbit, and he wore a round black cap and had long whiskers – like our goat, I guess. And he prayed – "
"Je-ru-sa-lem!" ejaculated Sammy.
"And the rabbit, Sadie's uncle, prayed," went on Dot, uninfluenced by Sammy's ejaculation. "Now what do you think of that?"
Master Sammy was as ignorant of the Jewish ritual and synagogue officers as was Dot Kenway. He burst out with disgust:
"I think Sadie Goronofsky was telling a fib, that's what I think!"
"I'm afraid so," Dot concluded with a sigh. "But I don't like to think so. I meant to ask Ruthie about it," and she shook her head again, still much puzzled over Sadie's uncle who was a rabbi.
The day waned, and still the two little stowaways heard nothing from above – not even the snuffing of the old hound about the hatch-cover. They were buried it seemed out of the ken of other human beings. It made them both feel very despondent. Sammy stuck to his guns and would not cry; but after a while Dot sobbed herself to sleep again – with a great luscious peach from Ruthie's basket of fruit, clutched in her hand and staining the frock of the Alice-doll.
The Nancy Hanks was finally brought to a mooring just across the canal from the tented field where the circus was pitched. The dirty brown canvas of the large and small tents showed that the circus had already had a long season. Everything was tarnished and tawdry about the show at this time of year. Even the ornate band wagon was shabby and the vociferous calliope seemed to have the croup whenever it was played.
But people had come from far and near to see the show. Its wonders were as fresh to the children as though the entertainment had just left winter quarters, all spic and span.
From the deck of the Nancy Hanks there looked to be hundreds and hundreds of people wandering about the fields where the tents were erected.
