The man stared still, with slowly rising indignation.  He was portly and middle-aged, the senior partner of the firm, who seldom touched his own horses of late years, and had a son at Harvard.  “What’s to pay?  What do you mean?  Anybody sick?” he asked.

“Help me into the buggy with my horse!” shouted Jim Tenny.  “I tell you the child is found, and I’ve got to take it home to its folks.”

“Don’t they know yet?  Is that it?”

“Yes, I tell you.”  Jim was backing out his horse as he spoke.

Mr. Clarkson seized a harness and threw the collar over the horse’s head, while Jim ran out the buggy.  When Mr. Clarkson lifted Eva and Ellen into the buggy he gave the child’s head a pat.  “God bless it!” he said, and his voice broke.

The horse was restive.  Jim took a leap into the buggy at Eva’s side, and they were out with a dash and a swift rattle.  The crowd parted before them, and cheer after cheer went up.  The whistles sounded again.  Then all the city bells rang out.  They were signalling the other searchers that the child was found.  Jim and Eva and Ellen made a progress of triumph down the street.  The crowd pursued them with cheers of rejoicing; doors and windows flew open; the house-yards were full of people.  Jim drove as fast as he could, scowling hard to hide his tenderness and pity.  Eva sat by his side, weeping in her terrible candor of grief and joy, and Ellen’s golden locks tossed on her shoulder.

Chapter VI

As Jim Tenny, with Eva Loud and the child, drove down the road towards the Brewster house, his horse and buggy became the nucleus of a gathering procession, shouting and exclaiming, with voices all tuned to one key of passionate sympathy.  There were even many women of the poorer class who had no sense of indecency in following the utmost lead of their tender emotions.  Some of them bore children of their own in their arms, and were telling them with passionate croonings to look at the other little girl in the carriage who had been lost, and gone away a whole day and two nights from her mother.  They often called out fondly to Ellen and Eva, and ordered Jim to wait a moment that they might look at the poor darling.  But Jim drove on as fast as he was able, though he had sometimes to rein his horse sharply to avoid riding down some lean racing boys, who would now and then shoot ahead of him with loud whoops of triumph.  Once as he drove he laid one hand caressingly over Eva’s.  “Poor girl!” he said, hoarsely and shamefacedly, and Eva sobbed loudly.  When Jim reached Mrs. Zelotes Brewster’s house there was a swift displacement of lights and shadows in a window, a door flew open, and the gaunt old woman was at the wheel.

“Stop!” she cried.  “Stop!  Bring her in here to me!  Let me have her!  Give her to me; I have got everything ready!  Come, Ellen—­come to grandmother!”

Then there was a mad rush from the opposite direction, and the child’s mother was there, reaching into the buggy with fierce arms of love and longing.  “Give her to me!” she shrieked out.  “Give me my baby, Eva Loud!  Oh, Ellen, where have you been?”