The Copy-Cat [49]
dreamed. For that was the day when little Lucy was lost. When the picnic was over, when the children were climbing into the straw-wagon and Madame and Miss Acton were genteelly disposed in the victoria, a lamentable cry arose. Sam drew his reins tight and rolled his inquiring eyes around; Madame and Miss Acton leaned far out on either side of the vic- toria. "Oh, what is it?" said Madame. "My dear Miss Acton, do pray get out and see what the trouble is. I begin to feel a little faint." In fact, Madame got her cut-glass smelling-bottle out of her bag and began to sniff vigorously. Sam gazed backward and paid no attention to her. Ma- dame always felt faint when anything unexpected occurred, and smelled at the pretty bottle, but she never fainted. Miss Acton got out, lifting her nice skirts clear of the dusty wheel, and she scuttled back to the up- roarious straw-wagon, showing her slender ankles and trimly shod feet. Miss Acton was a very wiry, dainty woman, full of nervous energy. When she reached the straw-wagon Miss Parmalee was climb- ing out, assisted by the driver. Miss Parmalee was very pale and visibly tremulous. The children were all shrieking in dissonance, so it was quite impossible to tell what the burden of their tale of woe was; but obviously something of a tragic na- ture had happened. "What is the matter?" asked Miss Acton, tee- tering like a humming-bird with excitement. "Little Lucy --" gasped Miss Parmalee. "What about her?" "She isn't here." "Where is she?" "We don't know. We just missed her." Then the cry of the children for little Lucy Rose, although sadly wrangled, became intelligible. Ma- dame came, holding up her silk skirt and sniffing at her smelling-bottle, and everybody asked ques- tions of everybody else, and nobody knew any satis- factory answers. Johnny Trumbull was confident that he was the last one to see little Lucy, and so were Lily Jennings and Amelia Wheeler, and so were Jim Patterson and Bubby Harvey and Arnold Carruth and Lee Westminster and many others; but when pinned down to the actual moment everybody disagreed, and only one thing was cer- tain -- little Lucy Rose was missing. "What shall I say to her father?" moaned Ma- dame. "Of course, we shall find her before we say any- thing," returned Miss Parmalee, who was sure to rise to an emergency. Madame sank helpless be- fore one. "You had better go and sit under that tree (Sam, take a cushion out of the carriage for Madame) and keep quiet; then Sam must drive to the village and give the alarm, and the straw- wagon had better go, too; and the rest of us will hunt by threes, three always keeping together. Re- member, children, three of you keep together, and, whatever you do, be sure and do not separate. We cannot have another lost." It seemed very sound advice. Madame, pale and frightened, sat on the cushion under the tree and sniffed at her smelling-bottle, and the rest scattered and searched the grove and surrounding underbrush thoroughly. But it was sunset when the groups returned to Madame under her tree, and the straw- wagon with excited people was back, and the victoria with Lucy's father and the rector and his wife, and Dr. Trumbull in his buggy, and other carriages fast arriving. Poor Miss Martha Rose had been out calling when she heard the news, and she was walk- ing to the scene of action. The victoria in which her cousin was seated left her in a cloud of dust. Cyril Rose had not noticed the mincing figure with the card-case and the parasol. The village searched for little Lucy Rose, but it was Jim Patterson who found her, and in the most unlikely of places. A forlorn pair with a multi- plicity of forlorn children lived in a tumble-down house about half a mile from the grove. The man's name was Silas Thomas, and his wife's was Sarah. Poor Sarah had lost a large part of the small wit she had originally owned several years before, when her youngest daughter, aged four, died. All the babies that had arrived since had not consoled her for the death of that little lamb, by name Viola May, nor restored her full measure of under-wit.