made the acquaintance of some young people, and stepped
off at a restaurant station with them to buy fruit, and so got left."

"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
circumstances," 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 circumstances. 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