and girl had not gone straight up into the air, nor had they
sunk into the ground. They could not have traveled far away from the
corner of Willow and Main Streets without somebody seeing them who would
remember the fact.

She went to the telephone and began calling up people whom she knew all
about town, and after explaining to Central the need for her inquiries,
that rather tart young person did all in her power to give Ruth quick
connections.

Finally she remembered Mrs. Kranz. Dot and Sammy might have gone to
Meadow Street, for many of their schoolmates lived in the tenements
along that rather poor thoroughfare.

Maria Maroni answered the telephone and she, of course, had news of the
lost children.

"Why, Miss Ruth," asked the little Italian girl into the transmitter,
"wasn't you going on the picnic, too?"

"What picnic!" asked the eldest Corner House girl at the other end of
the wire.

"Mrs. Kranz says Dottie and that little boy were going on a picnic. Sure
they were! I sold them crackers and cheese and a lot of things. And my
father sent you a basket of fruit like he always does. We thought you
and Miss Agnes would be going, too."

Ruth reported this to the others; but the puzzle of the children's
absence seemed not at all explained. Nobody whom Ruth and Agnes asked
seemed to know any picnic slated for this day.

"They must have made it up themselves--all their own selves," Agnes
declared. "They have gone off alone to picnic."

"Where would they be likely to go?" asked Luke Shepard, wishing to be
helpful. "Is there a park over that way--or some regular picnicking
grounds?"

"There's the canal bank," Ruth said quickly. "It's open fields along
there. Sometimes the children have gone there with us."

"I just _know_ Sammy has fallen in and been drowned," declared Mrs.
Pinkney, accepting the supposition as a fact on the instant. "What will
I ever say to Sam'l to-night when he comes home?"

"Well," said Tess, encouragingly, "I guess he won't spank Sammy for
doing that. At least, I shouldn't think he would."

The older folk did not pay much attention to her philosophy. They were
all more or less worried, including Mrs. MacCall and Aunt Sarah. The
latter displayed more trouble over Dot's absence than one might have
expected, knowing the maiden lady's usual unattached manner of looking
at all domestic matters.

Ruth, feeling more responsibility after all than anybody else--and
perhaps with more anxious l