“It doesn’t prove that she came through to Boston.”

“‘Came through’!  Why, upon earth, should she leave the cars before she reached Boston?”

“She might have made the acquaintance of some young people, and stepped off at a restaurant station with them to buy fruit, and so got left.”

“But she would have taken a later train then, and papa has been to the later ones.”

“Don’t—­don’t wonder and speculate any more why a little girl of ten years didn’t do exactly as a grown-up person would have done,” burst forth Uncle John.  “The whole blame lies with us, or with Tom and me.  We should never have allowed such a child to be sent off alone like that.”

“But, papa, it isn’t an uncommon thing for a child of her age to travel like that.”

“It isn’t very common, and it ought not to be.”

“Maybe she’s run away,” suddenly exclaimed the youngest of the daughters,—­a girl of fourteen.

“Mary!” cried the other two; and “How can you make fun like that now?” said Mrs. Fleming, reprovingly.

“I didn’t say it to make fun,” protested Mary,—­“I didn’t, truly; but—­but Ally was very queer sometimes.  She took up everything so, and got offended, or thought you didn’t care for her.  One day I asked her why she didn’t take things as I did,—­spat, and forget it the next minute, and she said, ’Because I’m not like you, I only happened here’!  Wasn’t that droll?”

“Droll!” exclaimed Uncle John.  “I think it’s the most pathetic thing I ever heard.  What have we all been doing that she should feel like this?”

“But she liked being here better than at Uncle Tom’s.  Florence was always tormenting her one way and another.”

“The trouble with her is that she was an only child, and, transplanted suddenly into two large families, she couldn’t fit herself to the new circumstances,” said Mrs. Fleming.

“And the trouble with us has been,” spoke up Uncle John, “that we didn’t take that fact into consideration enough, and try to help her to fit into the new circumstances.  Poor little soul, if we ever get her back again—­”

“Oh, don’t, don’t talk like that,—­’if we ever get her back again!’ as if she were a Charley Ross child that had been kidnapped,” burst forth Mary, with a breaking voice. “I meant to be good to Ally, and that’s why I taught Peter to say, ’Ally’s come, Ally’s come! give her a kiss! give her a kiss!’ I thought it would be such a pretty welcome, and Ally’d be so pleased, she’d believe we did care for her when she heard that.”

“You’re a little trump, Mary,” declared her father, with a suspicious moisture in his eyes.  “I only hope if—­when Ally comes back—­But, hark, there’s the door-bell!” as a sharp peal rang through the house.  “It may be one of the detectives.”

“A gentleman to see you in the parlor, sir,” said the maid a moment later, as she brought in a card.