Children are weird.

In the shopping centre yesterday evening, I noticed some unaccompanied children in front of me on the escalator. They were two girls, aged about three and five, both dressed in the customary top to toe pink, and the smaller one was holding tightly to a wheeled suitcase.
At the top of the escalator, I nipped into the nearest shop and asked the assistant to call security. Then I caught up with them, squatted down to their eye level and asked, had they lost their mummy?
The older one looked at me very warily, thought for a moment about whether I was the kind of Stranger one shouldn’t talk to and then said - very earnestly and with a slight Indian accent - “I went to find Aysha because she ran away with Mother’s luggage and I found her but now I cannot find Mother or Father again. I won’t bother to come and find you next time,” she added as an aside to Aysha.
“If we wait here, someone will come and help you find your mother and father,” I said.
Aysha mumbled something into her sister’s ear, at which they both suddenly looked terrified.
“What’s wrong?”
“They might have stopped looking and gone home without us.”
“No, no. I’m sure your mother and father are always very careful to bring their children back home with them,” I said as reassuringly as I could while trying not to giggle. They were unconvinced for a second, then Aysha whispered again and both of them cheered up immensely.
“No, they will not go home without us,” said the five-year-old happily, “because we have Mother’s luggage.”

(Their frantic-looking father turned up at a run a minute or so later.)