Wollaston also looked pale and bewildered.  He was only a boy, and had never been thrown much upon his own responsibility.  All that had been uppermost in his mind was the consideration that Maria could not be stopped, and she must not go alone to New York.  But he did not know what to think of it all.  He felt chaotic.  The first thing which seemed to precipitate his mentality into anything like clearness was the entrance of the conductor.  Then he thought instinctively about money.  Although still a boy, money as a prime factor was already firmly established in his mind.  He reflected with dismay that he had only his Wardway tickets, and about three dollars beside.  It was now dark.  The vaguest visions of what they were to do in New York were in his head.  The fare to New York was a little over a dollar; he had only enough to take them all in, then what next?  He took out his pocket-book, but Gladys looked around quickly.

“She’s got a whole book of tickets,” she said.

However, Wollaston, who was proud, started to pay the conductor, but he had reached Maria first, and she had said “Three,” peremptorily.  Then she handed the book to Wollaston, with the grim little ghost of a smile.  “You please keep this,” said she.  “I haven’t got any pocket.”

Wollaston was so bewildered that the possession of pockets seemed instantly to restore his self-respect.  He felt decidedly more at his ease when he had Maria’s ticket-book in his innermost pocket.  Then she gave him her purse also.

“I wish you would please take this,” said she.  “There are ten dollars in it, and I haven’t any pocket.”  Wollaston took that.

“All right,” he said.  He buttoned his gray vest securely over Maria’s pretty little red purse.  Then he leaned over the seat, and began to speak, but he absolutely did not know what to say.  He made an idiotic remark about the darkness.  “Queer how quick it grows dark, when it begins,” said he.

Maria ignored it, but Gladys said:  “Yes, it is awful queer.”

Gladys’s eyes looked wild.  The pupils were dilated.  She had been to New York but once before in her life, and now to be going in the evening to find Maria’s little sister was almost too much for her intelligence, which had its limitations.

However, after a while, Wollaston Lee spoke again.  He was in reality a keen-witted boy, only this was an emergency into which he had been surprised, and which he had not foreseen, and Maria’s own abnormal mood had in a measure infected him.  Presently he spoke to the point.

“What on earth are you going to do when you get to New York, anyhow?” said he to Maria.

“Find her,” replied Maria, laconically.

“But New York is a mighty big city.  How do you mean to go to work?  Now I—­”

Maria cut him short.  “I am going right up to Her cousin’s, on West Forty-ninth Street, and find out if Evelyn is there,” said she.

“But what would make the child want to go there, anyhow?”