“I am real glad she’s found,” said Maud.  Then she stared curiously at Maria.  “Say, was it so?” she asked.

“Was what true?” asked Maria, trembling.

“Was it true that you and Wollaston Lee and Gladys Mann all went to New York looking for your sister, and came out on the last train?”

“Yes, it is true,” replied Maria, quite steadily.

“What ever made you?”

“I thought she might have gone to a cousin of Hers who used to live on Forty-ninth Street, but we found the cousin had moved when we got there.”

“Gracious!” said Maud.  “And you didn’t come out till that last train?”

“No.”

“I should think you would be tired to death, and you don’t look any too chipper.”  Maud turned and stared at Wollaston, who was standing aloof.  “I declare, he looks as if he had been up a week of Sundays, too,” said she.  Then she called out to him, in her high-pitched treble, which sounded odd coming from her soft circumference of throat.  Maud’s voice ought, by good rights, to have been a rich, husky drone, instead of bearing a resemblance to a parrot’s.  “Say, Wollaston Lee,” she called out, and the boy approached perforce, lifting his hat—­“say,” said Maud, “I hear you and Maria eloped last night.”  Then she giggled.

The boy cast a glance of mistrust and doubt at Maria.  His face turned crimson.

“You are telling awful whoppers, Maud Page,” Maria responded, promptly, and his face cleared.  “We just went in to find Evelyn.”

“Oh!” said Maud, teasingly.

“You are mean to talk so,” said Maria.

Maud laughed provokingly.

“What made Wollaston go for, then?” she asked.

“Do you suppose anybody would let a girl go alone to New York on a night train?” said Maria, with desperate spirit.  “He went because he was polite, so there.”

Wollaston said nothing.  He tried to look haughty, but succeeded in looking sheepish.

“Gladys Mann went, too,” said Maria.

“I don’t see what makes you go with a girl like that anywhere?” said Maud.

“She’s as good as anybody,” said Maria.

“Maybe she is,” returned Maud.  Then she glanced at Wollaston, who was looking away, and whispered in Maria’s ear:  “They talk like fury about her, and her mother, too.”

“I don’t care,” Maria said, stoutly.  “She was down at the station and told me how Evelyn was lost, and then she went in with me.”

Maud laughed her aggravating laugh again.

“Well, maybe it was just as well she did,” she said, “or else they would have said you and Wollaston had eloped, sure.”

Maria began to speak, but her voice was drowned by the rumble of the New York train on the other track.  The Wardway train was late.  Usually the two trains met at the station.

However, the New York train had only just pulled out of sight before the Wardway train came in.  As Maria climbed on the train she felt a paper thrust forcibly into her hand, which closed over it instinctively.  She sat with Maud, and had no opportunity to look at it all the way to Wardway.  She slipped it slyly into her Algebra.