Family -- Juvenile fiction; Young women -- Juvenile fiction
This was the day after the identification of Andrew Anderson by Dorothy
in the Police Court. The man had disguised his appearance by taking off
his beard, but there were other marks, and the girl could not be shaken
in her positive identification.
The man had denied his guilt at first, but finally broke down when
confronted with the evidence against him and admitted he had the
Burlock child in hiding, but she was now in charge of some woman.
Dorothy was to go for her to-day.
Mr. Travers, though having many important affairs to attend to, was on
time, and he agreed to take Dorothy and Tavia with him to find Nellie.
"Keep close to me," he told the girls, making their way through dirty
and uncertain streets. "This is a rough part of town."
House after house he stopped at, leaving the girls in each instance
waiting anxiously to be told to follow. But the places were so much
alike in their squalor the search was becoming more and more tiresome.
"Maybe he gave the wrong address," ventured Tavia, discouraged and
dissatisfied with the many mistakes.
"No, but these people change homes so often," explained her father.
"Here, this looks--wait a minute!"
Down the steps of a dark basement Squire Travers hurried. The girls
looked after him--that place was not dirty, merely poor and bare.
Presently he called to them:
"Come in, girls," and Dorothy felt she could hardly move--she was so
anxious and expectant.
A woman, with a kind face, greeted them sadly, but with that
unmistakable air of one whom poverty cannot drag down from self-respect.
"Yes, I have a child with me," she answered nervously, "but I cannot
allow you to see her."
Then Squire Travers produced his credentials.
"You need not fear us," he told her kindly. "We have the best of news
for little Nellie Burlock, and we are only too anxious to make her
acquainted with it."
"But we have been disappointed so often," objected the woman, "and that
man Anderson--"
"You need not think of him now," said Squire Travers. "We have just
left him in the hands of the sheriff. This little girl," placing his
hand on Dorothy, "has brought it all about. She showed the child's
father how to die happily--made it possible for him to see the hope
beyond, and then she and her good father have worked untiringly to find
the child. Cannot we see her now?"
[Illustration: Instantly Dorothy had her arms around the little girl]
The woman took Dorothy's hands, and looked straight into her eyes.
Then, without a word, she turned and opened a narrow door, that seemed
to run under a stairway.
"Nellie!" she called softly.
Dorothy's heart felt as if a life was dependent upon those few moments.
What if it should not be the right one?
A child--pale and wan, but with an inexpressibly sweet face--stood
before them. She clung to the woman like a frightened little bird.
"They have good news for us, Nellie," said the woman. "This child is
Nellie Burlock, only child of Miles Burlock."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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