she saw the three approaching
she screamed:

"Oh, Mis' Edgham, they've found her! They're comin'! They've got
her!" and rushed to open the door.

Ida rose, and came gracefully to meet them with a sinuous movement
and a long sweep of her rose-colored draperies. Her radiant smile lit
up her face again. She looked entirely herself when Harry greeted her.

"Well, Ida, our darling is found," he said, in a broken voice.

Ida reached out her arms, from which hung graceful pendants of lace
and ribbons, but the sleepy child clung to her father and whimpered
crossly.

"She is all tired out, poor little darling! Papa's poor little
darling!" said Harry, carrying her into the parlor.

"Josephine, tell Annie to heat some milk at once," Ida said, sharply.

Annie, whose anxious face had been visible peeping through the dark
entrance of the dining-room, hastened into the kitchen.

"Josephine, go right up-stairs and get Miss Evelyn's bed ready,"
ordered Ida. Then she followed Harry into the parlor and began
questioning him, standing over him, and now and then touching the
yellow head of the child, who always shrank crossly at her touch.

Harry told his story. "I had the whole police force of New York on
the outlook, although I did not really think myself she was in the
city, and there papa's precious darling was all the time right on the
train with him and he never knew it. And here was poor little Maria,"
added Harry, looking at Maria, who had sunk into a corner of a
divan--"here was poor little Maria, Ida, and she had gone hunting her
little sister on her own account. She thought she might be at your
cousin Alice's. If I had known that both my babies were wandering
around New York I should have been crazy. When I got off the train,
there was Maria and that little Mann girl. She was down at the
station when she got home from Wardway, Maria says, and those two
children went right off to New York."

"Did they?" said Ida, in a listless voice. She had resumed her seat
in her rocking-chair.

"Edwin Shaw said he thought he saw Evelyn getting on the New York
train this morning," said Maria, faintly.

"She is all used up," Harry said. "You had better drink some hot milk
yourself, Maria. Only think of that child and that Mann girl going
off to New York on their own accounts, Ida!"

"Yes," said Ida.

"Wollaston Lee went, too," Maria said, suddenly. A quick impulse for
concealment in that best of hiding-places, utter frankness a