The
"blue kitty," the only creature who had anything to tell, sat washing
her face on the kitchen hearth, and yawning sleepily. Fly's shaker was
gone from the "short nail," and aunt Louise discovered some bank-bills
in a wash-bowl,--"Fly's work, of course." But this was all they knew.
Grandpa searched the barn, Abner the fields, Ruth the cellar; aunt
Louise and Horace ran down to the river. In half an hour several of
the neighbors had joined in the search.
"I always thought there would be a last time," said poor Mrs. Dr.
Gray, putting on her black bonnet, and joining Grace and Susy. "That
child seems to me like a little spirit, or a fairy, and I never
thought she would live long. She and Charlie were too lovely for this
world."
"O, _don't_, Mrs. Gray," said Grace. "If you knew how often she'd been
lost, you would not say so! We always find her, after a while,
somewhere."
Horace, who had gone on in advance, now came running back, swinging
his boots in the air.
"A trail!" cried he. "I've found a trail! Who planted these boots in
the road, if it wasn't Fly Clifford?"
"Perhaps she has gone to aunt Martha's," said Mrs.
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