“Whoa!” called out a boy’s shrill voice.  Down to the ground dropped the owner of the voice.  “What is the matter, little girl?”

“I’se been to Soogar Wiver, and I don’t know how to det home aden, I’se so vewy tired, and I toodn’t cwack the candy, and I want to see dwandma,” and Tot’s words ended in a wail of inarticulate woe.

“Where do you live?” asked the boy.

“A dwate, dwate ways off,” answered Tot.

“What is your name?”

“Tot Lindsay.”

“Lindsay?  O, I know!  All you’ve got to do is to jump into this wagon and have a nice ride, and, presently, we’ll be there.”

And presently, in the gloaming, they stopped before grandpapa’s house, and the boy, lifting out Tot in his arms, carried her to the door and bade her good-by, and, jumping into his wagon, rattled away.  Empty and silent stood the little house, like the dwelling of the Three Talking Bears, and little Tot might have been Silver Hair herself.

“Dwandma, dwandma!” she called.  But no grandmamma replied.

“Perhaps she has dus dorn out a minute,” thought she.  “I’ll det up on dis lounge and tover dis shawl over me, and s’prise her when she tums back.”

Something else besides the shawl covered Tot’s eyes.  Down over the blue orbs drifted the snowy lids.  Tired little Tot.

Where was dwandma and the rest all this time?  In trouble and confusion.  Calling and searching, searching and calling:  “Tot, Tot, Tot, little Tot!  Where are you?” Grandpapa and grandmamma, and Uncle Will and Tot’s mamma.

At last, on the road running beside the river, they had found the fragment of dotted cambric, held fast by a detaining splinter; and then Tot’s mamma had run ahead and led them across the meadow, right in the track of Tot’s little feet, straight to the river.  And then grandmamma had said, quaveringly, that Tot was always asking to go to Sugar River; and then Will’s heart had given a great guilty throb, and sank way, way down.  He knew so well why.  And then Tot’s mamma had thrown up her two hands, and darted towards a little string of coral beads and picked it up.  And, as they stood there, the river’s murmur seemed like the murmur of the river of death, and the white fog, beginning to rise, like the folds of a little child’s shroud; and Tot’s mamma threw up her hands again and fell among all the unfeeling stones and pebbles.

Will ran all the way home and went straight to the barn and harnessed the horse, and then went into the house and into the sitting-room and snatched a shawl from the lounge, and—­“Jerusalem Crickets!” was all he had breath enough left to say.  Tot had surprised somebody, indeed.

Down by the river, in the dusk and the river damp, as they waited, came Will, striding along with what looked like a bundle of old shawls upon his shoulder; and presently, parting the folds like the calyx of a flower, Tot’s rosy face blossomed out.