They lingered for some time over hot chocolate and wafers. They were waiting for a surface car to carry them home when, on hearing low but excited words, they turned about to behold to their vast astonishment their little mystery child being led along by the collar of her dress. The person dragging her forward was an evil looking woman who appeared slightly the worse for drink.

"So that's the trick," they heard her snarl. "So you would run away! Such an ungratefulness. After all we done for you. Now you shall beg harder than ever."

"No, I won't beg," the girl answered in a small but determined voice. "And I shan't steal either. You can kill me first."

"Well, we'll see, my fine lady," growled the woman.

All this time the child was being dragged forward. As she came opposite the two girls, the woman gave a harder tug than before and the girl almost fell. Something dropped to the sidewalk, but the woman did not notice it, and the child evidently did not care, for they passed on.

Lucile stooped and picked it up. It was the paper lunch box they had seen the child carrying earlier in the evening.

"Something in it," she said, shaking it.

"Lucile," said Florence in a tense whisper, "are we going to let that beast of a woman get that child? She doesn't belong to her, or if she does, she oughtn't to. I'm good for a fight."Lucile's face blanched. "Here in this city wilderness," she breathed. "Anywhere for the good of a child. Come on." Florence was away after the woman and child at a rapid rate. "We'll get the child free. Then we'll get out," breathed Florence. "We don't want any publicity." Fortune favored their plan. The woman, still dragging the child, who was by now silently weeping, hurried into a narrow dismal alley. Suddenly as she looked about at the sound of a footstep behind her, she was seized in two vises and hurled by some mechanism of steel and bronze a dozen feet in the air, to land in an alley doorway. At least so it seemed to her, nor was it far from the truth. For Florence's months of gymnasium work had turned her muscles into things of steel and bronze. It was she who had seized the woman. It was all done so swiftly that the woman had no time to cry out. When she rose to her feet, the alley was deserted. The child had fled in one direction, while the two girls had stepped quietly out into the street in the other direction and, apparently quite unperturbed, were waiting for a car. "Look," said Lucile, "I've 

 Prev. P 20/99 next