into my charge with many tears.

"Having accomplished this business, greatly to my own satisfaction, I
set off with Adolphe, on a tour on foot through Germany. He was not only
a great comfort to me, but useful withal. He was sturdy and strong, a
real son of the hills, and he carried my small valise, and enlivened the
length of the road with his agreeable prattle.

"When we put up for the night, the people always took him for my son; a
fact I thought it useless to dispute in a foreign country. It would have
had a more significant meaning in England. A red-headed, single lady
could not have travelled alone, with a red-headed child, without
disagreeable insinuations. Abroad I always passed myself off as a widow,
and Adolphe of course was my orphan son.

"Matters went off very pleasantly, until we arrived at Vienna, and I
hired a neat lodging in a quiet part of the city, where I determined to
spend the winter. The next morning I went out, accompanied by Adolphe,
to examine the lions of the place. By accident we got entangled in a
crowd, which had collected in one of the principal thoroughfares, to
witness a fire. While striving to stem my way through the heaving mass
of human forms that hedged us in on every side, I suddenly missed my
child. To find him among such a multitude, was, indeed, to look for a
needle in a waggon of hay; yet I commenced the search in utter
desperation.

"I ran hither and thither, wherever I could find an opening, frantically
calling upon Adolphe. I asked every person whom I met--'If they had
seen my boy?' Some pitied--some laughed; but the greater number bade me
stand out of their way. I was mad with fear and excitement, and returned
to my lodgings late in the evening, starving with hunger, and worn out
with fatigue of mind and body. I hoped that the child might have found
his way home, and was waiting me there. Alas! Adolphe had not been seen,
and I went to bed too much vexed to eat my supper.

"Early the next morning I resumed my search. I hired the public cryer to
proclaim my loss; I borrowed a large bell from my landlady, and went
through all the streets crying him myself, hoping that he would
recognise my voice. Alas! alas! I never saw my child again!"

"Never?" said Flora. "Was he irrevocably lost?"

"Lost, lost, lost!" said Wilhelmina, shaking her head. "This comes of
adopting other people's brats. Had he been a worthless, spoilt imp of my
own, I should have been more successful. I s