"But she would have taken a later train then, and papa has been to the later ones."

"Don't--don't wonder and speculate any more why a little girl of ten years didn't do exactly as a grown-up person would have done," burst forth Uncle John. "The whole blame lies with us, or with Tom and me. We should never have allowed such a child to be sent off alone like that."

"But, papa, it isn't an uncommon thing for a child of her age to travel like that."

"It isn't very _common_, and it ought not to be."

"Maybe she's run away," suddenly exclaimed the youngest of the daughters,--a girl of fourteen.

"Mary!" cried the other two; and "How can you make fun like that _now_?"

said Mrs. Fleming, reprovingly.

"I didn't say it to make fun," protested Mary,--"I didn't, truly; but--but Ally was very queer sometimes. She took up everything so, and got offended, or thought you didn't care for her. One day I asked her why she didn't take things as _I_ did,--spat, and forget it the next minute, and she said, 'Because I'm not like you, _I only happened here_'! Wasn't that droll?"

"Droll!" exclaimed Uncle John. "I think it's the most pathetic thing I ever heard. What have we all been doing that she should feel like this?"

"But she liked being _here_ better than at Uncle Tom's. Florence was always tormenting her one way and another."

"The trouble with her is that she was an only child, and, transplanted suddenly into two large families, she couldn't fit herself to the new circ.u.mstances," said Mrs. Fleming.

"And the trouble with _us_ has been," spoke up Uncle John, "that we didn't take that fact into consideration enough, and try to help her to fit into the new circ.u.mstances. Poor little soul, if we ever get her back again--"

"Oh, don't, don't talk like that,--'if we ever get her back again!' as if she were a Charley Ross child that had been kidnapped," burst forth Mary, with a breaking voice. "_I_ meant to be good to Ally, and that's why I taught Peter to say, 'Ally's come, Ally's come! give her a kiss!

give her a kiss!' I thought it would be such a pretty welcome, and Ally'd be so pleased, she'd believe we _did_ care for her when she heard that."

"You're a little trump, Mary," declared her father, with a suspicious moisture in his eyes. "I only hope if--_when_ Ally comes back--But, hark, there's the door-bell!" as a sharp peal rang through the house.

"It may be one of the detectives."

"A gentleman to see you in the parlor, sir," said the maid a moment later, as she brought in a card.

Uncle John glanced at the card, and then, uttering an exclamation of surprise, pa.s.sed it over to his wife, and, jumping up hastily, left the room.

"Is it the chief of the detectives?" asked Laura, animatedly.

"It isn't a detective at all; it's Dr. Phillips."

"You don't mean _the_ Dr. Phillips,--_Bernard_ Phillips?"

"Yes."

"How strange, and at this hour in the morning! It must be something about Thanksgiving exercises," interposed Maud.

"But we're not _his_ parishioners. We don't go to _his_ church!"

"Oh, dear!" cried Mary; "I'm _so_ disappointed. I did hope it was the detective bringing Ally back."

"Kate!" called Uncle John's voice here, "will you come into the parlor?"

and Mrs. Fleming, obeying this call, found herself a minute after exchanging greetings with the unexpected visitor.

"I want you to tell her, Doctor, just what you've told me exactly,"

said Uncle John. "It's about Ally, my dear," to his wife. "She's found, and--and--"

"She is at my house," took up the Doctor; and then he told of the little girl who had come to his house the night before, of her grievous disappointment, and the accident that had befallen her,--an accident that had robbed her of consciousness for a time, and from which she had only sufficiently recovered within the last few hours to answer the questions that were put to her in regard to her relations, that steps might be taken to restore her to them.

"And she is seriously hurt,--she couldn't come with you?" broke in Aunt Kate, breathlessly.

"No, she was not seriously hurt," he a.s.sured her; and then came that most delicate and difficult part of the Doctor's task,--to tell, in what gentle phrase he could, that this wilful child refused to accompany him; that she had taken a foolish fancy into her head that her relations did not care for her,--a fancy that had been strengthened into positive belief when she failed to find her uncle at the station, and had suggested to her a wild little plan of going away from them altogether, into some orphans' home that she had heard of, where she was sure a place could be found for her. Very gentle, indeed, was the phrasing of all this,--so gentle and full of sweet human consideration for everybody's shortcomings and mistakes that Aunt Kate forgot that the Doctor was a stranger; and with this forgetfulness the sharp pang of humiliation at a stranger's knowledge of such a family difficulty, and the little sting of resentment at Ally's att.i.tude towards them all, was overborne to such an extent that she could frankly admit that her husband was right, and that none of them had had love and patience enough to help the child to fit into the new circ.u.mstances of her life.

It was an added pang, but there was no resentment in it, when she saw Ally's sudden shrinking from her as she entered the Doctor's parlor with him a little later.

To think that they had, though unwittingly, hurt and estranged the child like this, was Mrs. Fleming's first thought; and the tears came to her eyes, and her voice broke as she cried impulsively, "Oh, my little girl, my little girl!"

Ally started at the sight of these tears, at the sound of this tenderly breaking voice. And there was Uncle John; and _he_ was crying too, and _his_ voice was breaking as he said something. What was it he was saying?--that it was not forgetfulness, it was not neglect of her, that had made him fail to meet her at the station, but an untoward accident to the streetcar he was in that had delayed him. And what was that Aunt Kate was saying? That they _did_ care for her, that they _did_ want her, and that they had set the telegraphic wires all over the country to hunt for her and bring her back to them.

"But--but--Florence told me," faltered Ally, "that you dreaded the winter on my account,--I was so--so bad-tempered--so hard to live with."

"Dreaded the winter on your account! Florence told you I said that?"

cried Mrs. Fleming, in amazement.

"She said she heard you say it to her mother."

A light broke over Mrs. Fleming's face. "Oh, I remember now perfectly.

It was just after you were so ill with that bad throat, and I was speaking to your aunt Ann about it, and I said to her, 'I dread the winter on Ally's account.' How could--how _could_ Florence put such a mischievous meaning to my words?"

"Perhaps she only heard just those words," replied Ally, who would never take advantage of anybody.

"But why should she want to tell you what would hurt you like that?"

"We'd been quarrelling," answered Ally, with an honest brevity that was very edifying.

"But, as you see now it was for your bad throat, and not for your bad temper, that I dreaded the winter," said Aunt Kate, with a smile, "you will come back with us, and let us both try again. We meant to be good to you, dear; but we did not think enough that you had been unused to a big family,--that you were a little ewe lamb that had been transplanted into a great crowded fold, and left to find your place with the crowd; and you misunderstood this, and took us too hardly; but we're going to do better. We're going to be more thoughtful of one another, and you'll come home with us now, and we'll have our Thanksgiving dinner together, won't we?"

Childish and ignorant of the world's ways, as her wild idea in regard to her right to a place in an orphans' home proved her, Ally had a great deal of sense in other directions, and she began to perceive that she had not been the wilfully neglected and abused person she had thought herself, and to think, too, that perhaps Aunt Kate _might_ have had something to bear from _her_. At any rate, her good sense made her see that her aunt had come to her with kind and generous intentions, and that the least she could do was to respond with what grace was in her power; and so with a little smile that had something pathetic in it to those who saw it, it was so tremulous with that pitiful doubt that had been born of the last three unhappy years, she put her hand into Mrs.

Fleming's, and signified her readiness to go with her. And then and there, as she met that smile, Kate Fleming vowed to herself that never again through fault of hers should this child suffer for lack of loving care; and with this resolve warm in her heart, she clasped the little hand in hers more closely, and said brightly,--

"You'll see how glad the girls will be to see you, Ally, when we get home."

But Ally had no response to make to this. A great dread had seized her as she felt herself going to meet them. Uncle John's and Aunt Kate's a.s.surance of regard was one thing, but Uncle John and Aunt Kate were not the girls, and poor Ally was quite sure that no one of them had ever cared very much for her, though Mary had alternately petted and laughed at her, and now--why, now, they might dislike her for making such a fuss, for Laura had often said she did dislike people so who made a fuss, and Maud would agree with Laura, and Mary would laugh at her more than ever. Oh, dear! oh, dear! if she could only go back! if she could only get that dear good Doctor to find her a place in--But, "Here we are, Ally!" said Uncle John; and "Here she is!" exclaimed three girlish voices; and there, standing in the doorway, were Laura and Maud and Mary; and at sight of their faces, at sound of their voices, Ally's dread began to vanish. And then, just then, it was that Peter, who had been banished to the hall, called out uproariously, "Ally's come! Ally's come! give her a kiss! give her a kiss!" and Mary called out after him, "I taught him to say that; I taught him more 'n a month ago."

"'More 'n a month ago'! Oh!" breathed Ally under her breath, "she liked me well enough for this _more 'n a month ago_!"

Uncle John and Aunt Kate and Laura and Maud and Mary were looking on, and they knew what Ally was thinking of,--the very words of it,--by that sudden radiant smile upon her face; and Mary was so pleased thereat, she had to cry out,--

"Oh, what a jolly Thanksgiving this is! Could anything be added to make it jollier?"

But something _was_ added. When they were all at the dinner-table that night,--mother and father and girls and the three boys who had just come up from their boarding-school that very morning,--this telegram was brought in from Uncle Tom,--

"Thanks for word of Ally's safety. All send love. Florence is writing to her."