Sammy had once confided to the little Corner House girls that "We men have to hang together"; and although he respected his father, and feared what the latter might do in the way of punishment, the punishment was usually inflicted by Mrs. Pinkney, after all. Sometimes when his mother considered that the boy had been extraordinarily naughty and she told the fact to his father, that wise man would take his son by the hand and walk away with him. Sammy always started on one of these walks with a most serious expression of countenance; but whatever was said to him, or done to him, during these absences, Sammy always returned with a cheerful mien and with a pocketful of goodies for himself and something extra nice for his mother. Neale O'Neil frequently declared that Mr. Pinkney was one of the wisest men of his time and probably "put it all over old Solomon. They say Solomon had a lot of wives," Neale remarked. "But I bet he didn't know half as much about women and how to handle them as Mr. Pinkney does." However, to get back to the discovery of the absence of Sammy and Dot. After Tess had searched the neighborhood without finding any trace of them, and Agnes had returned from down town, a council was held. "Why, they did not even take Tom Jonah with them," observed Ruth. "If they had," said Agnes, almost ready to weep, "we would be sure they were not really lost." "Can't you find out at the police station?" suggested Cecile. "Oh, my! Oh my!" cried Tess, in horror. "You don't s'pose our Dot has really been _arrested_?" "Listen to the child!" exclaimed Mrs. Pinkney, kissing her. "Of course not. The young lady means that the police may help find them. But I do not know what Sam'l Pinkney would say if he thought the officers had to look for his son." Ruth, in her usual decisive way, brooked no further delay. Surely the missing boy 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.