“That was what Mr. Adams said,” retorted Mrs. Adams, with some asperity, “and I told him that I would rather the dozen policemen were in evidence before I was shot and robbed than after.  I had on all my rings, and my diamond sunburst.”

“Do you not think, dear friend, that it would be a good plan to offer up our voices at the Throne of Grace for the safe restoration of the dear child?” asked Mrs. Applegate again.  Her voice was sonorous, very much like her husband’s.  She felt that, so far as in her lay, she was taking his place.  He was out of town.

It was then that Maria rushed into the room.  She ran straight up to her step-mother.  The other women started.  Ida continued to rock, and look at the Tiffany vase.  It seemed as if she dared not take her eyes from it for fear of losing her expression.  Then Maria spoke, and her voice did not sound like her own at all.  It was accusatory, menacing.

“Where is my little sister?” she cried.  “Where is she?”

Mrs. Jonas White rose, approached Maria, and put her arms around her caressingly.  “You poor, dear child,” she sobbed, “I guess you do feel it.  You did set a heap by that blessed little thing, didn’t you?”

“She is in the hands of the Lord,” said Mrs. Applegate.

“If the police of New York were worth anything, she would be in the police station by this time,” said Mrs. Adams, with a fierce toss of her pretty blond head.

“We know not where His islands lift their fronded palms in air; we only know we cannot drift beyond His love and care,” said Mrs. Applegate, with a solemn aside.  Tears were in her own eyes, but she resolutely checked her impulse to weep.  She felt that it would show a lack of faith.  She was entirely in earnest.

“Mebbe she is in the police-station,” sobbed Mrs. White, continuing to embrace Maria.  But Maria gave her a forcible push away, and again addressed herself to her step-mother.

“Where is she?” she demanded.

“Oh, you poor, dear child!  Your ma don’t know where she is, and she is so awful upset, she sets there jest like marble,” said Mrs. White.

“She isn’t upset at all.  You don’t know her as well as I do,” said Maria, mercilessly.  “She thinks she ought to act upset, so she sits this way.  She isn’t upset.”

“Oh, Maria!” gasped Mrs. White.

“The child is out of her head,” said Mrs. Adams, and yet she looked at Maria with covert approval.  She was Ida’s intimate friend, but in her heart of hearts she doubted her grief.  She had once lost by death a little girl of her own.  She kept thinking of her little Alice, and how she should feel in a similar case.  It did not seem to her that she should rock, and look at a Tiffany vase.  She inveighed against the detectives and police with a reserve meaning of indignation against Ida.  It seemed to her that any woman whose child was lost should be up and generally making a tumult, if she were doing nothing else.