When Mrs. Fulton appeared at the school-room door Miss Patten was
greatly alarmed. Elinor Mayhew and May Bailey exchanged a look of
surprised apprehension. They felt sure that Sylvia had hurried home and
told her mother just what had happened. If she had, and Mrs. Fulton had
come to inform Miss Patten, they knew there would be unpleasant things
in store for them.
In a short time a thorough search for the lost girl was in progress.
Servants were sent along the streets, and Mrs. Fulton hastened home
thinking it possible that Sylvia might be in her own room.
No one paid any attention to the little colored girl in the faded blue
cotton gown who wandered about the paths and around the summer-house.
Estralla noticed two of the older girls talking together, and heard the
taller one say: "Well, wherever she is, she needn't think we will ever
take back one word. She IS a Yankee!"
"They'se done somethin' to my missy," decided Estralla. "They'se scairt
her." She ran down the path toward the wall at the end of the garden,
and stopped suddenly; for right in front of her, caught on the jessamine
vine which grew over the wall, she saw a fluttering blue ribbon. "Dat's
off'n Missy Sylvia's hair, dat ribbon is," she whispered, reaching up
for it. Holding it fast in her hands she looked closely at the mass of
heavy vines, and nodded her little woolly head. "Dat's w'at she done.
She dumb right up here, to git away frum those imps o' Satan w'at was a
plaguein' her," decided Estralla, and in an instant she was going up the
wall in a much easier manner than had been possible for Sylvia.
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