But a crowd of people surging up around them at this moment, took off all attention from Bessie and everybody else but the little fugitive and her kind pursuer. Caryl made her way through the crowd with flushed face, her little brown hat hanging by its strings around her neck, pantingly dragging after her the little black girl.
"It's our Viny," she said, "and something is the matter with Aunt Sylvia! Oh, Madam Grant!"
"My poor child," said a sweet-faced woman, reaching out a kind arm, while the children seized hold of Caryl at every available point, between them dragging her and her charge into shelter, "don't be troubled. Drive just as fast as you can, Thomas, to No. 27, you know," she commanded hurriedly.
Then the first thing Caryl did was to turn upon Viny and unhook the precious brooch as a low sob came from her white lips. "If it had been lost!"
A soft hand stole under the little brown cloak to clasp her own; but Madam Grant said never a word. She knew what the young girl's heart was too full for speech; that the mother's brooch would speak more tenderly than ever she could, of forgiveness to the little ignorant black girl.
The children were all eyes at Viny and her costume, but they said never a word while she howled on steadily, only ejaculating in an occasional gust, "O Miss Sylvy—Miss Sylvy!"
Caryl, white as a sheet, rushed out of the carriage and into the old lodging house the instant the horses paused by the broken gate. Maum Patty was singing in the little kitchen the refrain she never indulged in except in her most complacent moods. Flinging wide the door, Caryl panted out, "Oh, what is it! Tell me at once!"
"Lawks!" exclaimed Maum Patty, startled from her peaceful enjoyment, and turning so suddenly in the old calico-covered chair that she sent her spectacles spinning into the middle of the floor. "Massy, how yer look! Tain't wurth it—don't! He hain't spile't it; I stopped him," she added exultingly.
"Stopped what?" echoed Caryl in bewildered distress. "Oh, do tell me! Is'nt Aunt Sylvia sick? Tell me, Maum Patty," she pleaded. And she grasped the old woman's arm in an agony of suspense.
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