But she was busy with her own plans.
So through a zig-zag of four or five dingy streets they came to one she recognised as that leading into the Plain, or open space where the show-people encamped.

At its far end 'Dolph halted.

His tail still wagged, but his look was sidelong, furtive, uneasy.
Tilda, coming up with him, stood still for a moment, stared, and caught her breath with a little gasp of dismay.
The Plain was empty.
Circus and menagerie, swing-boats, roundabouts, shooting-galleries--all were gone.

The whole area lay trampled and bare, with puddles where the steam-engines had stood, and in the puddles bedabbled relics of paper brushes, confetti bags, scraps torn from feminine flounces, twisted leaden tubes of "ladies' tormentors" cast away and half-trodden into the mire; the whole an unscavenged desolation.

Her folk--the show-folk--had deserted her and vanished, and she had not a penny in her pocket.
It cost Tilda all her pluck to keep what she called a tight upper lip.
She uttered no cry, but seated herself on the nearest doorstep-- apparently with deliberation, actually not heeding, still less caring, to whom the doorstep belonged.
"Oh, 'Dolph!" she murmured.
To her credit, in the act of appealing to him, she understood the dog's heroism, and again stretched forth her arms.