Alanna, swinging her legs, gave a joyful assent.  She was too happy to talk, but the other three had much to say.

“Mother thinks we’ll make eight hundred dollars,” said Teresa.

“Gee!” said the twins together, and Dan added, “If only Mrs. Church wins that desk now.”

“Who’s going to do the drawing of numbers?” Jimmy wondered.

“Bishop,” said Dan, “and he’ll call down from the platform, ’Number twenty-six wins the desk.’  And then Alanna’ll look in her book, and pipe up and say, ’Daniel Ignatius Costello, the handsomest fellow in the parish, wins the desk.’”

“Twenty-six is Harry Plummer,” said Alanna, seriously, looking up from her chance book, at which they all laughed.

“But take care of that book,” warned Teresa, as she climbed down.  “Oh, I will!” responded Alanna, fervently.

And through the next four happy days she did, and took the precaution of tying it by a stout cord to her arm.

Then on Saturday, the last afternoon, quite late, when her mother had suggested that she go home with Leo and Jack and Frank and Gertrude and the nurses, Alanna felt the cord hanging loose against her hand, and looking down, saw that the book was gone.

She was holding out her arms for her coat when this took place, and she went cold all over.  But she did not move, and Minnie buttoned her in snugly, and tied the ribbons of her hat with cold, hard knuckles, without suspecting anything.

Then Alanna disappeared and Mrs. Costello sent the maids and babies on without her.  It was getting dark and cold for the small Costellos.

But the hour was darker and colder for Alanna.  She searched and she hoped and she prayed in vain.  She stood up, after a long hands-and-knees expedition under the tables where she had been earlier, and pressed her right hand over her eyes, and said aloud in her misery, “Oh, I can’t have lost it!  I can’t have.  Oh, don’t let me have lost it!”

She went here and there as if propelled by some mechanical force, a wretched, restless little figure.  And when the dreadful moment came when she must give up searching, she crept in beside her mother in the carriage, and longed only for some honorable death.

When they all went back at eight o’clock, she recommenced her search feverishly, with that cruel alternation of hope and despair and weariness that every one knows.  The crowds, the lights, the music, the laughter, and the noise, and the pervading odor of pop-corn were not real, when a shabby, brown little book was her whole world, and she could not find it.

“The drawing will begin,” said Alanna, “and the Bishop will call out the number!  And what’ll I say?  Every one will look at me; and how can I say I’ve lost it!  Oh, what a baby they’ll call me!”

“Father’ll pay the money back,” she said, in sudden relief.  But the impossibility of that swiftly occurred to her, and she began hunting again with fresh terror.