"If the police of New York were worth anything, she would be in the police station by this time," said Mrs. Adams, with a fierce toss of her pretty blond head.

"We know not where His islands lift their fronded palms in air; we only know we cannot drift beyond His love and care," said Mrs.

Applegate, with a solemn aside. Tears were in her own eyes, but she resolutely checked her impulse to weep. She felt that it would show a lack of faith. She was entirely in earnest.

"Mebbe she _is_ in the police-station," sobbed Mrs. White, continuing to embrace Maria. But Maria gave her a forcible push away, and again addressed herself to her step-mother.

"Where is she?" she demanded.

"Oh, you poor, dear child! Your ma don't know where she is, and she is so awful upset, she sets there jest like marble," said Mrs. White.

"She isn't upset at all. You don't know her as well as I do," said Maria, mercilessly. "She thinks she ought to act upset, so she sits this way. She isn't upset."

"Oh, Maria!" gasped Mrs. White.

"The child is out of her head," said Mrs. Adams, and yet she looked at Maria with covert approval. She was Ida's intimate friend, but in her heart of hearts she doubted her grief. She had once lost by death a little girl of her own. She kept thinking of her little Alice, and how she should feel in a similar case. It did not seem to her that she should rock, and look at a Tiffany vase. She inveighed against the detectives and police with a reserve meaning of indignation against Ida. It seemed to her that any woman whose child was lost should be up and generally making a tumult, if she were doing nothing else.

The Maria, standing before the beautiful woman swaying gently, with her eyes fixed upon the pink and gold of the vase, spoke out for the first time what was in her heart of hearts with regard to her.

"You are a wicked woman," said she; "that is what you are. I don't know as you can help being wicked. I guess you were made wicked; but you _are_ a wicked woman. Your mouth smiles, but your heart never does. You act now as if you were sorry," said she, "but you are not sorry, the way my mother would have been sorry if she had lost me, the way she would have been sorry if Evelyn had been her little girl instead of yours. You are a wicked woman. I have always known it, but I have never told you so before. Now I am going to tell you. Your own child is lost, you let her be lost. You didn't look out for her. Yes, your own child is lost, and you sit there and rock!"

Ida for a moment made no reply. The other women, and Gladys and Wollaston in the vestibule, listened with horror.

"You have had beefsteak and fried potatoes cooked, too," continued Maria, sniffing, "and you have eaten them. You have been eating beefsteak and fried potatoes when your own child was lost and you did not know where she was!" It might have been ridiculous, this last accusation in the thin, sweet, childish voice, but it was not. It was even more terrible than anything else.

Ida turned at last. "I hate you," she said slowly. "I have always hated you. You have hated me ever since I came into this house," she said, "though I have done more than your own mother ever did for you."

"You have not!" cried Maria. "You have got nice clothes for me, but my own mother loved me. What are nice clothes to love? You have not even loved Evelyn. You have only got her nice clothes. You have never loved her. Poor papa and I were the only ones that loved her. You never even loved poor papa. You saw to it that he had things to eat, but you never loved him. You are not made right. All the love in your heart is for your own self. You are turned the wrong way. I don't know as you can help it, but you are a dreadful woman. You are wicked. You never loved the baby, and now you have let her be lost.

She is my own little sister, and papa's child, a great deal more than she is anything to you. Where is she?" Maria's voice rang wild. Her face was blazing. She had an abnormal expression in her blue eyes fixed upon her step-mother.

Ida, after her one outburst, gazed upon her with a sort of fear as well as repulsion. She again turned to the Tiffany vase.

Mrs. White, sobbing aloud like a child, again put her arms around Maria.

"Come, come," she said soothingly, "you poor child, I know how you feel, but you mustn't talk so, you mustn't, dear! You have no right to judge. You don't know how your mother feels."

"I know how She doesn't feel!" Maria burst out, "and She isn't my mother. My mother loves me more way off in heaven than that woman loves Her own child on earth. She doesn't feel. She just rocks, and thinks how She looks. I hate Her! Let me go!" With that Maria was out of the room, and ran violently up-stairs.

When she had gone, the three visiting women looked at one another, and the same covert expression of gratified malice, at some one having spoken out what was in their inmost hearts, was upon all three faces. Ida was impa.s.sive, with her smiling lips contracted. Mrs.

Applegate again murmured something about uniting in prayer.

Maria came hurrying down-stairs. She had in her hand her purse, which contained ten dollars, which her father had given her on her birthday, also a book of New York tickets which had been a present from Ida, and which Ida herself had borrowed several times since giving them to Maria. Maria herself seldom went to New York, and Ida had a fashion of giving presents which might react to her own benefit. Maria, as she pa.s.sed the parlor door, glanced in and saw her step-mother rocking and staring at the vase. Then she was out of the front-door, racing down the street with Wollaston Lee and Gladys hardly able to keep up with her. Wollaston reached her finally, and again caught her arm. The pressure of the hard, warm boy hand was grateful to the little, hysterical thing, who was trembling from head to foot, with a strange rigidity of tremors. Gladys also clutched her other sleeve.

"Say, M'ria Edgham, where be you goin'?" she demanded.

"I'm going to find my little sister," gasped out Maria. She gave a dry sob as she spoke.

"My!" said Gladys.

"Now, Maria, hadn't you better go back home?" ventured Wollaston.

"No," said Maria, and she ran on towards the station.

"Come home with me to my mother," said Wollaston, pleadingly, but a little timidly. A girl in such a nervous strait as this was a new experience for him.

"She can go home with me," said Gladys. "My mother's a heap better than Ida Slome. Say, M'ria, all them things you said was true, but land! how did you da.r.s.e?"

Maria made no reply. She kept on.

"Say, M'ria, you don't mean you're goin' to New York?" said Gladys.

"Yes, I am. I am going to find my little sister."

"My!" said Gladys.

"Now, Maria, don't you think you had better go home with me, and see mother?" Wollaston said again.

But Maria seemed deaf. In fact, she heard nothing but the sound of the approaching New York train. She ran like a wild thing, her little, slim legs skimming the ground like a bird's, almost as if a.s.sisted by wings.

When the train reached the station, Maria climbed in, Wollaston and Gladys after her. Neither Wollaston nor Gladys had the slightest premeditation in the matter; they were fairly swept along by the emotion of their companion.

When the train had fairly started, Gladys, who had seated herself beside Maria, while Wollaston was in the seat behind them, heaved a deep sigh of bewilderment and terror. "My!" said she.

Wollaston also looked pale and bewildered. He was only a boy, and had never been thrown much upon his own responsibility. All that had been uppermost in his mind was the consideration that Maria could not be stopped, and she must not go alone to New York. But he did not know what to think of it all. He felt chaotic. The first thing which seemed to precipitate his mentality into anything like clearness was the entrance of the conductor. Then he thought instinctively about money. Although still a boy, money as a prime factor was already firmly established in his mind. He reflected with dismay that he had only his Wardway tickets, and about three dollars beside. It was now dark. The vaguest visions of what they were to do in New York were in his head. The fare to New York was a little over a dollar; he had only enough to take them all in, then what next? He took out his pocket-book, but Gladys looked around quickly.

"She's got a whole book of tickets," she said.

However, Wollaston, who was proud, started to pay the conductor, but he had reached Maria first, and she had said "Three," peremptorily.

Then she handed the book to Wollaston, with the grim little ghost of a smile. "You please keep this," said she. "I haven't got any pocket."

Wollaston was so bewildered that the possession of pockets seemed instantly to restore his self-respect. He felt decidedly more at his ease when he had Maria's ticket-book in his innermost pocket. Then she gave him her purse also.

"I wish you would please take this," said she. "There are ten dollars in it, and I haven't any pocket." Wollaston took that.

"All right," he said. He b.u.t.toned his gray vest securely over Maria's pretty little red purse. Then he leaned over the seat, and began to speak, but he absolutely did not know what to say. He made an idiotic remark about the darkness. "Queer how quick it grows dark, when it begins," said he.

Maria ignored it, but Gladys said: "Yes, it is awful queer."

Gladys's eyes looked wild. The pupils were dilated. She had been to New York but once before in her life, and now to be going in the evening to find Maria's little sister was almost too much for her intelligence, which had its limitations.

However, after a while, Wollaston Lee spoke again. He was in reality a keen-witted boy, only this was an emergency into which he had been surprised, and which he had not foreseen, and Maria's own abnormal mood had in a measure infected him. Presently he spoke to the point.

"What on earth are you going to do when you get to New York, anyhow?"

said he to Maria.

"Find her," replied Maria, laconically.

"But New York is a mighty big city. How do you mean to go to work?

Now I--"