noticed that Sara walked slowly, as though suddenly stricken with age. Then, as some friends came in, Alice forgot her child. It was not until they had left and dusk was falling that she turned to her Mother-in-law with the question:
"I wonder what's happened to Sara?"
Another ten minutes went by. Still no Sara. Alice went through the rooms of her house, calling. There was no reply anywhere. Alice went down the back stairs to the kitchen, but Sara had vanished. She had come into the house and the house had apparently swallowed her up.
"It's this fairy business," Alice grumbled. "It's getting worse than Evelyn Dearie." Indeed, since the coming of the fairies and Sara's numerous bumps from her attempts to learn to fly there had been no peace in the Marcey household.
Alice began a systematic search. She looked under beds; she searched in closets. Anxiety clutched her heart—an anxiety which grew with each moment. It communicated itself to her Mother-in-law and to Laurie, until the house echoed with voices crying for Sara, while the women went around, opening and shutting the same closets and looking beneath the same pieces of furniture.
One thing was sure: Sara must be in the house somewhere. To go out, she would have had to pass through the kitchen or they would have heard her. coming down the front stairs.
Alice had several times gone up to the attic, but in the attic were no hiding places, unless one hid behind trunks. At last, as no place remained except the attic, she took a candle and again went up-stairs. From one corner came a little sound of hopeless sobbing. Alice followed this sound, and in a wide-yawning Saratoga trunk was Sara. Sara had opened the trunk and got in to sob
