"Baby" lay on its face disconsolately on the ground--and the orchard was empty! Phronsie was gone!
"It's no use," said Ben, to the distracted household and such of the neighbors as the news had brought hurriedly to the scene, "to look any more around here--but somebody must go toward Hingham;he'd be likely to go that way."
"No one could tell where he would go," cried Polly, wringing her hands.
"But he'd change, Ben, if he thought folks would think he'd gone there," said Mrs. Pepper.
"We must go all roads," said Ben, firmly; "one must take the stage to Boxville, and I'll take Deacon Brown's wagon on the Hingham road, and somebody else must go to Toad Hollow.""I'll go in the stage," screamed Joel, who could scarcely see out of his eyes, he had cried so; "I'll find--find her--I know.
"Be spry, then, Joe, and catch it at the corner!"Everybody soon knew that little Phronsie Pepper had gone off with "a cross organ man and an awful monkey!" and in the course of an hour dozens of people were out on the hot, dusty roads in search.
"What's the matter?" asked a testy old gentleman in the stage, of Joel who, in his anxiety to see both sides of the road at once, bobbed the old gentleman in the face so often as the stage lurched, that at last he knocked his hat over his eyes.
"My sister's gone off with a monkey," explained Joel, bobbing over to the other side, as he thought he caught sight of something pink that he felt sure must be Phronsie's apron. "Stop! stop! there she is!" he roared, and the driver, who had his instructions and was fully in sympathy, pulled up so suddenly that the old gentleman flew over into the opposite seat.
"Where?"
But when they got up to it Joel saw that it was only a bit of pink calico flapping on a clothes-line; so he climbed back and away they rumbled again.
The others were having the same luck. No trace could be found of the child. To Ben, who took the Hingham road, the minutes seemed like hours.
"I won't go back," he muttered, "until I take her. I can't see mother's face!"But the ten miles were nearly traversed; almost the last hope was gone. Into every thicket and lurking place by the road-side had he peered--but no Phronsie! Deacon Brown's horse began to lag.
"Go on!" said Ben hoarsely; "oh, dear Lord, make me find her!"The hot sun poured down on the boy's face, and he had no cap.
What cared he for that? On and on he went. Suddenly the horse stopped. Ben doubled up the reins to give him a cut, when "WHOA!" he roared so loud that the horse in very astonishment gave a lurch that nearly flung him headlong. But he was over the wheel in a twinkling, and up with a bound to a small thicket of scrubby bushes on a high hill by the road-side. Here lay a little bundle on the ground, and close by it a big, black dog; and over the whole, standing guard, was a boy a little bigger than Ben, with honest gray eyes. And the bundle was Phronsie!
"Don't wake her up," said the boy, warningly, as Ben, with a hungry look in his eyes, leaped up the hill, "she's tired to death!""She's my sister!" cried Ben, "our Phronsie!""I know it," said the boy kindly; "but I wouldn't wake her up yet if Iwere you. I'll tell you all about it," and he took Ben's hand which was as cold as ice.
