Tired little Tot.
Where was dwandma and the rest all this time? In trouble and confusion.
Calling and searching, searching and calling: "Tot, Tot, Tot, little
Tot! Where are you?" Grandpapa and grandmamma, and Uncle Will and Tot's
mamma.
At last, on the road running beside the river, they had found the
fragment of dotted cambric, held fast by a detaining splinter; and then
Tot's mamma had run ahead and led them across the meadow, right in the
track of Tot's little feet, straight to the river. And then grandmamma
had said, quaveringly, that Tot was always asking to go to Sugar River;
and then Will's heart had given a great guilty throb, and sank way, way
down. He knew so well _why_. And then Tot's mamma had thrown up her two
hands, and darted towards a little string of coral beads and picked it
up. And, as they stood there, the river's murmur seemed like the murmur
of the river of death, and the white fog, beginning to rise, like the
folds of a little child's shroud; and Tot's mamma threw up her hands
again and fell among all the unfeeling stones and pebbles.
Will ran all the way home and went straight to the barn and harnessed
the horse, and then went into the house and into the sitting-room and
snatched a shawl from the lounge, and--"Jerusalem Crickets!" was all he
had breath enough left to say. Tot had surprised somebody, indeed.
Down by the river, in the dusk and the river damp, as they waited, came
Will, striding along with what looked like a bundle of old shawls upon
his shoulder; and presently, parting the folds like the calyx of a
flower, Tot's rosy face blossomed out.
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