CHAPTER XVIII

Mrs. Mundy cannot find Etta Blake. She went this morning to the
house just opposite the box-factory, but no one is living there. A
"For Rent" sign is on it. After trying, without success, to find
from the families who live in the neighborhood where the people who
once occupied the house have gone, she went to the agent, but from
him also she could learn nothing.

"They were named Banch. A man and his wife and three children lived
in the house, but where they've moved nobody could tell me, or give
me a thing to go on. They went away between sun-up and sun-down and
no one knows where." Mrs. Mundy, who had come to my sitting-room to
make report, before taking off her coat and hat, sat down in a chair
near the desk at which I had been writing, and smoothed the fingers
of her gloves with careful precision. She was disappointed and
distressed that she had so little to tell me.

"I couldn't find a soul who'd ever heard of a girl named Etta Blake.
Poor people are generally sociable and know everybody in the
neighborhood, but didn't anybody know her. Mr. Parke, the agent,
said the man paid his rent regular and he was sorry to lose him as a
tenant, but he didn't know where he'd gone. If his wife took
boarders he didn't know anything about it. The girl might have
rented a room--" Mrs. Mundy hesitated, looked at me uncertainly.
"Shall I ask Mr. Crimm to--to help me find her? If she's in town
he'd soon know where."