“Guess I’ll go now, and find Hollis,” said Fly, slipping down from the bed, for the talk did not interest her.

“O, but I want to go with you, Katie,” said Mrs. Brooks, coaxingly.  “Bennie, you amuse her, while I change my dress.”

CHAPTER IX.

MARIA’S MOTHER.

“I know your uncle must feel dreadfully to lose you; but never mind—­he’ll see you soon,” said Mr. Brooks.

“O, Uncle ’Gustus isn’t there.”

“Not there?” said Mrs. Brooks, turning round from the cracked looking-glass.  “Where then?”

“O, he’s gone off.”

“Gone off?  Why, pa, ain’t that too bad?  I’m right up and down disappointed.  But, then, the colonel has a wife; I can go to see her, you know; and I’ll tell her just how you’re situ—­”

“My Aunt Madge is gone off, too.”

“You don’t say so!”

“And my brother Hollis is gone.”

“This is a funny piece of work if it’s true,” said Mr. Brooks, with another genuine laugh; “you’d better ask her a few more questions before you start out.  Who else is gone?  Have they shut the house up?”

“Yes, sir; shut it right up tight.”

“Nobody in it, at all?”

“No, only the men and women.  Prudy’s gone, and Dotty Dimple’s gone, and I’m gone.”

“Only the men and women, she says.  That must be the servants.  So the house must be open, pa.  At any rate, I shall take her.  Say by-bye, my pretty, and we’ll be starting.”

Fly was very glad to go, but Maria clung to her fondly, and Bennie ran after her almost to Broadway, where Mrs. Brooks took a Fifth Avenue stage.  She knew Colonel Allen’s house very well, for she had seen it more than once, while it was in process of building.  That was two or three years ago, when her husband was well, and the family lived very comfortably on Thirty-third Street.  She sighed as she thought how different it was now.  Mr. Brooks would never be able to work any more; they hardly had food enough to eat, and poor Maria had lost her eyesight.

“Here we are, little Katie,” said she.

But the child did not wait to be helped out; she danced down the steps, and would have flown across the street, if Mrs. Brooks had not caught her.

“I see it—­I see it; my auntie’s house.  But there isn’t nobody to it.”

The man who met them at the door was so surprised and delighted to see Fly, that he forgot his manners, and did not ask Mrs. Brooks in.

“Bless us, the baby’s found!” cried he, and ran to spread the news.

Aunt Madge was walking the parlor floor, and Horace sitting on the sofa, as rigid as the marble elf Puck, just over his head.  Prudy and Dotty had joined hands, and were crying softly on the rug.  As the police had been notified of Fly’s loss, all the family had to do was to wait.  A servant was at the nearest telegraph office, with a horse and carriage, and at the first tidings would drive home and report.