"Yes. I should think that would have pleased him quite twenty dollars'
worth," agreed Mr. Cameron. "But now suppose you tell me all about it,
Snuggy, from the very start. I think likely I shall get a clearer idea
of how my little girl became possessed of so much wealth."
So Carolyn May went back to the pale lady and her baby on the bench
in the park, and how she and Prince had made their acquaintance. The
resultant adventure when the pale lady had wrecked her baby's go-cart
reminded Papa Cameron of the perils confronting his little daughter
whenever she went out on the streets.
"It was a narrow escape," he said with a sigh. "I hope you, Snuggy,
are just as careful as you can be when you come to a crossing?"
"Oh, yes, I am!" she cried. "And so is Princey. He barks if he sees
anything coming. And he grabbed the pale lady's skirt with his teeth.
But now, Papa Cameron, how shall I find her and give her this money for
a new baby carriage?"
That was a question which was the text for much discussion around the
dinner table. Mamma Cameron was quite as deeply interested in the
problem as her husband and her little daughter. Mamma Cameron was a
very sweet looking woman, and a single glance was all one needed to be
assured that Carolyn May was her daughter.
"The poor woman doubtless needs that twenty dollars, Lewis," she
said to Carolyn's father. "How careless people with plenty of money
sometimes are!"
"Careless in giving away money to small girls, Hannah?" asked Mr.
Cameron quizzically; "or careless in running their cars?"
"Careless in thinking that the giving of twenty dollars in this case
absolves them from all responsibility. It would seem as if that man did
not care whether the money ever reached the woman or not. He considered
his conscience salved."
"Perhaps you are right, my dear," rejoined Mr. Cameron. "The more
reason, then, why we should carry through his good intention. We must
find the pale lady."
"Of course we must!" cried Carolyn May with enthusiasm. "Shall we put
an advertisement in your paper?"
"'Advertising pays'--we are agreed on that," said her father, smiling.
"But in this case we may assume that a less bald method of publicity
had better be tried first. Did you never see the pale lady in the park
before, Snuggy?"
"No, Papa, never before. But, then, she might come there often just the
same. You know, Princey and I don't often go there in the afternoon."
"Perhaps you and Mamma can go tomorrow and look for her," Mr. Cameron
suggested. "She cannot live far away, or she would not have been
sitting in that particular quarter of Central Park. And we may assume,
also, that her home is in an easterly direction, as that was the way
she was going when the automobile literally crossed her path."
"I wonder who the people were in the auto, Lewis," said Mrs. Cameron.
"It is not likely that we shall learn that," her husband replied. "But
Carolyn's friend, the pale lady, we must find.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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