Someone
has stolen her. Oh, my little girl; someone has stolen her. What shall I
do? What shall I do?"

"Try to calm yourself," urged Mrs. Gallant. "She will probably return
before long."

"She left no note? Gave no warning?" John asked. "She may have run away
of her own accord, you know," he added.

Mrs. Sprockett stopped her sobbing and sat upright in her chair.
Indignation blazed in her eyes.

"How dare you, sir? How dare you?" she demanded, furiously. "How dare
you stand there and tell me that my Alma left me of her own free will?
My Alma leave her mother who loves her so? My Alma run away like some
common scamp? I didn't come here to be insulted like that, sir!"

A look from his mother caused John to repress an inclination to ask her
to tell him really why she came to them.

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I didn't mean to insinuate----"

"You did! You did! You stood up there and told me that my little girl
who loves her mother ran away from home," Mrs. Sprockett cried,
irrationally. "That's what you did! You stood up there----"

"I'm sorry," interrupted John, moving from the room to avoid the
outburst.

He stepped out on the porch and found Mrs. Sprockett's husband, coatless
and collarless as usual, with the same weary look about his eyes and the
same hopeless droop of his narrow, rounded shoulders, mounting the
steps. Across the street, in the Sprockett home, the baby wailed and
fretted.

"Beg pardon," began Mrs. Sprockett's husband. "I just thought----"

"Yes, she's inside," said John, anticipating the inevitable question.

Instead of moving on into the house Mrs. Sprockett's husband stood where
he had stopped.

"Our Alma----" he began.

"If you want my advice," said John, interrupting again, "I would wait
until morning if I were you and then ask the police to help you find
her."

No storm of protest came from Mrs. Sprockett's husband. The instinctive
fraternalism of man between man caused him to signal, with a nod of his
head, for John to come closer to him. With frequent apprehensive glances
toward the door, he whispered:

"Alma's not a bad girl, but she's been held down too much. She's only
sixteen and she likes pretty things and picture shows and other things a
girl of her age likes naturally. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if she's
just picked up and left to go to work some place and have a little more
freedom. She's not a bad girl, she's--she's--just a girl, that's all,
and she wants to d