“Now walk as fast as you can,” little Miss Wiggin said, as away she went toward Fourth Avenue, with Roberta close behind her. If Bobs had known what was going to happen that noon, she would not have left the shop.
Fourth Avenue having been reached, Miss Wiggin darted into a corner delicatessen store. “What will you have for your lunch?” she turned to ask of her companion. “I’m going to get five cents’ worth of hot macaroni and a dill pickle.”
“Double the order,” Bobs said, and then she added to the man who stood behind the counter: “I’ll also take two ham sandwiches and two chocolate eclairs.”
“Oh, Miss Dolittle, isn’t that too much for you to spend at noon?” This anxiously from pale, starved-looking little Miss Wiggin.
At the Vandergrift table there had always been many courses with a butler to serve, and in her heedless, thoughtless way, Bobs had supposed that everyone, everywhere, had enough to eat.
It was a queer little smile that she turned toward her new friend as she replied: “This being our first lunch together, let’s have a spread.” Then she paid the entire bill, which came to forty cents. “No,” she assured the protesting Nell Wiggin, “I won’t offer to treat every day. After this we’ll go Dutch, honest we will! Now lead the way.”
Again in the thronged street, little Miss Wiggin turned with an apology: “Maybe I oughtn’t to’ve asked you to come to my room. Probably you’re used to something better.”
“Don’t you believe it!” Bobs replied cheerily. “I live in the shabbiest kind of a dump.” She did not add that she had not as yet resided on New York’s East Side for more than twenty-four hours, at the longest, and that prior to that her home on Long Island had been palatial. She was eager to know how girls who had never had a chance were forced to live. Miss Wiggin was descending rather rickety steps below the street level. “Is your room in the basement?” Bobs asked, trying to keep from her voice the shock that this revelation brought to her. No wonder there were no roses in the wan cheeks of little Miss Wiggin.
“Yes,” was the reply, “the caretakers of the buildings all live in the basements, you know, and Mrs. O’Malley, the janitor of this one, is a widow with two little boys. She had a room to rent cheap and so I took it.”
Then she led the way through a long, narrow, dark hall. Once Bobs touched the wall and she drew back shuddering, for the stones were cold and clammy.
The little room to which Bobs was admitted opened only on an air shaft, but there was sunlight entering its one small window; too, there were white curtains and a geranium in bloom on the sill.
“It’s always pleasantest at noon, for that’s the only time that the sun reaches my window,” the little hostess said, as she hurriedly drew a sewing table out from behind the small cot bed, unfolded it and placed the lunch thereon. Bobs’ gaze wandered about the room, which was so small that its three pieces of furniture seemed to crowd it. In one corner was a bamboo bookcase which held the real treasure of Miss Wiggin. Row after row of books in uniform dark red binding. They were all there—Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Old Curiosity Shop and the rest of them.
“Nights it would be sort of dismal sitting in here alone if ’twasn’t for those books,” the little hostess confessed. “That’s a real good kerosene lamp I have. It makes a bright light. I curl up on the couch as soon as my supper’s eaten, and then I forget where I really am, for I go wherever the story takes me. Come, everything is ready,” she added, “and since fifteen minutes of our time is gone already, we’d better eat without talking.”
This they did, and Gloria would have said that they gulped their food, but what can one do with but half an hour for nooning?
They didn’t even stop to put away the table. “I’ll leave it ready for my supper tonight,” Miss Wiggin said, as she fairly flew down the dark, damp basement hall.
Five minutes later they were entering the alley door of the antique shop which had so fine an entrance on Fifth Avenue.
“May the Fates save us!” Bobs exclaimed. “I do believe we are one minute late. Are we in for execution or dismissal?”
But that one minute had evidently escaped the watchful eye of Miss Peerwinkle, for, when Nell Wiggin and Roberta entered the shop, they saw the portly Mr. Queerwitz pacing up and down and in tragic tones he was exclaiming: “Gone! Gone! I should have locked it up, but I didn’t think anyone else knew the value of it.” Then, wheeling around, he demanded of Bobs: “What good are you, anyway, in the book department? One of the rarest books I possess was stolen this morning right beneath your very eyes, and——”
Little Nell Wiggin, usually so timid, stepped forward and said: “It must have happened while we were out at lunch. It couldn’t have been while we were here, for nobody at all went down to the books.”
Mr. Queerwitz paid no more attention to the words of little Miss Wiggin than he would at that moment to the buzzing of a fly.
“Dolittle, well-named, I should say,” he remarked scathingly. How Roberta wished that she had chosen a busier sounding name, but the deed was done. One couldn’t be changing one’s name every few hours, but——
Her revery was interrupted by: “What have you to say for yourself?”
“Nothing,” was the honest reply.
“You are discharged,” came the ultimatum.
Bobs was almost glad. “Very well, Mr. Queerwitz,” she replied, and turning, she walked briskly toward the cloakroom.
When Bobs returned from the cloakroom, having donned her hat and jacket, she was informed that Mr. Queerwitz had just driven away, but that he hadn’t said where he was going. Bobs believed that he was going to report her uselessness as a detective to her employer, James Jewett. Ah, well, let him go. Perhaps after all she had made a mistake in her choice of a profession. As she was passing she heard the older women talking.
Miss Harriet Dingley was saying, “Now I come to think of it, just after the girls went out to lunch, I did see a man come in, but I thought he was looking at china.”
The head lady shot a none too pleasant glance at the other clerk as she said coldly, “Well, you aren’t giving me any information. Didn’t I watch every move he made like a cat watches a mouse hole? Just tell me that!”
“Oh, yes, Miss Peerwinkle. I’m not criticizing anything you did. But you remember when a boy ran by shouting fire, we did go to the door to see where the fire was and a minute later the man went out and——”
“He went empty-handed,” the head-woman said self-defendingly.
“I know he did. Now please don’t think I’m criticizing you, but when he went out I noticed that he was a hunch-back, and I’m certain that he didn’t have a hump when he came in.”
“We’ll not discuss the matter further,” was said in a tone of finality as Miss Peerwinkle walked away with an air of offended dignity.
Bobs looked about for Nell, to whom she wished to say good-bye. She was glad that the youngest clerk was beyond the book shelves as Roberta was curious to know which book had been taken. A gap on the top shelf told the story. It was a rare old book for which one thousand dollars had been offered if its mate could be found.
“Whoever has taken the book has the other volume. I’m detective enough to know that,” Roberta declared. Then she turned to find little Miss Wiggin standing at her side looking as sad as though something very precious was being taken away from her.
Impulsively Bobs held out both hands.
“Don’t forget, Nell Wiggin, that you and I are to be friends, and what’s more, next Sunday morning at ten o’clock sharp I’m coming down to get you and take you to my home for dinner. How would you like that?”
“Like it?” The dark eyes in the pale, wan face were like stars. “O, Miss Dolittle, what it will mean to me!”
Miss Harriet Dingley did nod when she heard Bobs singing out “Good-bye,” but Miss Peerwinkle seemed to be as deaf as a statue.
“I could laugh,” Bobs said to herself as she joined the throng on Fifth Avenue, “if my heart wasn’t so full of tears. I don’t know as I can stand much more of seeing how the other half lives without having a good cry over it. Dickens, the only friend and comforter of that frail little mite of humanity!”
Then, as she turned again toward Avenue A, she suddenly remembered the package of detective stories for which she had promised to call at the shop where there was a spray of lilacs and a much-loved invalid woman.
“I guess I’ll give up the detective game,” she thought, as she hurried along, “but I’ll enjoy reading the stories just the same.”
Half an hour later she had changed her mind and had decided that she really was a very fine detective indeed.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon when Bobs entered the musty book shop on the East Side and found the place unoccupied. However, the tinkling of a bell sounded in the back room and the little old man shuffled in. His expression was troubled, and when Roberta inquired for his invalid wife, he replied that she wasn’t so well. “Poor Marlitta,” he said, and there was infinite tenderness in his voice, “she’s yearning to go back to the home country where our children are and their children, and the doctor thinks it might make her strong once again to be there, but the voyage costs money, and Marlitta would rather die here than not go honest.”
The old man seemed to be overcome with emotion, then suddenly recalling his customer’s errand, he shuffled away to procure the package of detective stories for which she had called. During his absence Roberta went back of the counter, reached for a book on an upper shelf and, while so doing, dislodged several others that tumbled about her, revealing, as though it had been hidden in the dark recess back of them, the rare book which that morning had been taken from the Queerwitz Antique Shop.
That, then, was what the old man meant when he said that his Marlitta would not go unless she could “go honest.”
The girl quickly replaced the books and then stood deep in thought. What could she do? What should she do? She knew that the gentle bookseller had taken the rare volume merely to try to save the life of the one dearest to him. When he returned with the package the girl heard herself asking:
“But you, if your Marlitta went to the home country, would you not be very lonely?”
There was infinite sadness in the faded eyes and yet, too, there was something else, a light from the soul that true sacrifice brings.
“Ah, that I also might go,” he said; then with a gesture that included all of the small dark shop, he added, “but these old books are all I have and they do not sell.”
At that moment Roberta recalled the name of Lionel Van Loon, who, as Miss Peerwinkle had assured her, would pay one thousand dollars for the rare book and its mate. For a thoughtful moment the girl gazed at the lilac, then decided to tell the little old man all that she knew.
At first she regretted this decision when she saw the frightened expression in his gentle, child-like face, but she hastened to assure him that she only wanted to help him, and so she was asking him to send the stolen book back to the antique shop by mail.
When this had been done, Roberta, returning from the corner post box, found the old man gazing sadly at another volume which the girl instantly knew was the prized mate of the one she had just mailed.
“It’s no use without the other,” the bookseller told her, “and Mr. Queerwitz wouldn’t pay what it’s worth. He never does. He crowds the poor man to the wall and then crushes him.”
“I have a plan,” the girl told him. “Will you trust me with this book for a little while?”
Trust her? Who would not? For reply the old man held his treasure toward her. “Heaven bless you,” was all that he said.
It was four o’clock when Bobs descended from a taxicab and mounted the steps of a handsome brown stone mansion on Riverside Drive. Mr. Van Loon was at home and, being a most kindly old gentleman and accustomed to receiving all manner of persons, he welcomed Roberta into his wonderful library, listened courteously at first, but with growing interest, when he realized that this radiant girl had a book to sell which she believed to be both rare and valuable. The eyes of the cultured gentleman plainly revealed his great joy when he actually saw the long-sought first volume.
“My dear young lady,” he said, “you cannot know what it means to me to be able to obtain that book. I know where I can find its mate and so, I assure you, I will purchase it, the price being?—” He paused inquiringly.
Roberta heard, as though it were someone else speaking, her own voice saying: “Would one thousand dollars be too much, Mr. Van Loon?”
To a man whose hobby was collecting books, and who was many times a millionaire, it was not too much. “Will you have cash or a check?” he inquired.
“Cash, if you please.”
It was six o’clock when Bobs handed the money to the overjoyed bookseller, who could not thank her enough. The little old woman again was by the window and she smiled happily as she listened to the words of the girl that fairly tumbled over each other in their eagerness to be spoken.
Then reaching out a frail hand to her “good man,” and looking at him with a light in her eyes that Bobs would never forget, she said: “Caleb, now we can both go home to our children.”
Roberta promised to return the following day to help them prepare for the voyage. She was turning away when the little woman called to her: “I want you to have my lilac,” she said, as she held the blossoming spray toward the girl.
It was half past six o’clock when Bobs reached home. Gloria was watching for her rather anxiously, but it was not until they were gathered about the fireplace for the evening that Bobs told her story.
“Here endeth my experience as a detective,” she concluded.
But Roberta was mistaken.
True to her promise Roberta had gone on the following afternoon to assist her new friends to prepare for their voyage, but to her amazement she found that they had departed, but the janitress living in the basement was on the watch for the girl and at once she ascended the stone stairs and inquired: “Are you Miss Dolittle?”
Bobs replied that she was, and the large woman, in a manner which plainly told that she had a message of importance to convey, whispered mysteriously, “Wait here!”
Down into the well of a stairway she disappeared, soon to return with an envelope containing something hard, which felt as though it might be a key.
This it proved to be. The writing in the letter had been painstakingly made, but the language was not English, and Bobs looked at it with so frankly puzzled an expression that the woman, who had been standing near, watching curiously, asked: “Can I read it for you?”
Strange things surely had happened since the Vandergrifts had gone to the East Side to live, but this was the strangest of all. It was hard for Roberta to believe that she heard aright. The old man had written that his entire stock was worth no more than five hundred dollars, and since Roberta had procured more than that sum for him, he was making her a gift of the books that remained, and requested that she remove them at once, as the rent on the shop would expire the following day.
The janitress, with an eye to business, at once said that her son, Jacob, was idle and could truck the books for the young lady wherever she wished them to go. It was two o’clock in the afternoon when this conversation took place, and at five o’clock Gloria and Lena May, returning from the Settlement House, were amazed to see a skinny horse drawing a two-wheeled ash cart stopping at the curb in front of the Pensinger mansion. The driver was a Hebrew lad, but at his side sat no less a personage than Roberta, who beamed down upon her astonished sisters.
After a moment of explanation the three girls assisted the boy Jacob to cart all the books to one of the unoccupied upper rooms, and when he had driven away Roberta sank down upon a kitchen chair and laughed until she declared that she ached. Lena May, busy setting the table for supper, merrily declared: “Bobs, what a girl you are to have adventures. Here Glow and I have been on the East Side just as long as you have, and nothing unusual has happened to us.”
“Give it time,” Roberta remarked as she rose to wash her hands. “But now I seem to have had a new profession thrust upon me. Glow, how would it do to open an old book shop out on the front lawn?”
“I’ll prophesy that these books will fill a good need some day, perhaps, when we’re least expecting it,” was Gloria’s reply.
Then, as they sat eating their evening meal together and watching the afterglow of the sunset on the river, that was so near their front door, at last Bobs said: “Do see those throngs of poor tired-out women trooping from the factory. Now they will go to the Settlement House and get their children, go home and cook and wash and iron and darn and—” she paused, then added, “How did we four girls ever manage to live so near all this and know nothing about it? I feel as though I had been the most selfish, useless, good-for-nothing——”
“Here, here, young lady. I won’t allow you to call my sister such hard names,” Glow said merrily as she rose to replenish their cups of hot chocolate. Then, more seriously, she added as she reseated herself: “Losing our home seemed hard, but I do believe that we three are glad that something happened to make us of greater use in the world.”
“I am,” Lena May said, looking up brightly. She was thinking of the sandpile at the Settlement House over which she had presided that afternoon.
And Gloria concluded: “I know that I would be more nearly happy than I have been since our mother died, if only I knew where Gwendolyn is.”
And where was Gwendolyn, the proud, selfish girl who had not tried to make the best of things? Gloria would indeed have been troubled had she but known.
It was early Sunday morning. “Since we are to have your little friend, Nell Wiggin, to dinner today,” Gloria remarked as the three sat at breakfast, “suppose we also invite Miss Selenski. It will be a nice change for her.”
“Good!” Bobs agreed. “That’s a splendid suggestion. Now what is the program for the day?”
“Lena May has consented to tell Bible stories to the very little children each Sunday morning at the Settlement House,” Gloria said, “and I have asked a group of the older girls who are in one of my clubs to come over here this afternoon for tea and a quiet hour around the fireplace. I thought it would be a pleasant change for them, and I want you girls to become acquainted with them so when I mention their names you will be able to picture them. They really are such bright, attractive girls! The Settlement House is giving them the only chance that life has to offer them.” Then, smiling lovingly at the youngest, Gloria concluded: “Lena May has consented to pour, and you, Bobs, I shall expect to provide much of the entertainment.”
Roberta laughed. “Me?” she asked. “What am I to do?”
“O, just be natural.” Gloria rose and began to clear the table as she added: “Now, Bobs, since you have to go after your friend, Miss Wiggin, Lena May and I will prepare the dinner. We have it planned, but we’re going to surprise you with our menu.”
It was nine o’clock when Roberta left the Pensinger mansion. It was the first Sunday that the girls had spent on the East Side, and what a different sight met the eyes of Bobs when she started down the nearly deserted street, on one side of which were the wide docks.
Derricks were silent and the men who lived on the barges were dressed in whatever holiday attire they possessed. They were seated, some on gunwales, others on rolls of tarred rope, smoking and talking, and save for an occasional steamer loaded with folk from the city who were sailing away for a day’s outing, peace reigned on the waterfront, for even the noise of the factory was stilled.
Turning the corner at Seventy-eighth Street, Roberta was surprised to find that the boys’ playground was nearly deserted. She had supposed that at this hour it would be thronged. Just as she was puzzling about it, a lad with whom she had a speaking acquaintance emerged from a doorway and she hailed him:
“You’re all dressed up, Antovich, aren’t you? Just like a regular little gentleman. Are you going to Sunday school?”
“Oh, no, ma’am; that is, I donno as ’tis. Mr. Hardinian doesn’t go to call it that. He calls it a boys’ club by Treasure Seekers. There’s a clubhouse over to Seventy-fifth Street. I say, Miss Bobs, I wish for you to come and see it. I sure wish for you to.”
Roberta assured the eager lad that she might look in a little later, then bidding him good-bye, she turned in to the model tenement house to ask Miss Selenski to a one o’clock dinner.
“Oh, how lovely and sunny and sweet smelling your little home is,” Bobs said three minutes later when she had been admitted to the small apartment, the front windows of which overlooked the glistening blue river.
“I like it,” was the bright reply of the slender dark-eyed girl who lived there.
Bobs continued: “How I wish the rich folk who built this would influence others to do the same. Take that rookery across the street, for instance. It looks as though a clap of thunder would crash it to the ground, and it surely is a fire trap.”
“It is indeed that,” Miss Selenski said, “and though I have reported it time and again, the very rich man who owns it finds it such excellent income property that he manages to evade an injunction to have the place torn down. Some day we’ll have a terrible tragedy of some kind over there, and then perhaps—” she paused and sighed. “But, since we can’t help, let’s talk of pleasanter things.”
Bobs then informed Miss Selenski that she had come to invite her to dinner that day, and the little agent of the model apartments indeed was pleased, and replied: “Some time soon I shall invite you girls over here and give you just Hungarian dishes.” Then Bobs departed, and as she walked down Fourth Avenue she glanced with rather an amused expression up at the windows of the Detective Agency of which, for so brief a time, she had been an employee. She wondered what that good-looking young man, James Jewett, had thought of her, for, surely, her recent employer would have at once telephoned that as a detective she had been “no good.” Then she decided that she probably never would learn, as she most certainly would not again return to the agency. But little do we know what fate holds in store for us.
Nell Wiggin was ready and waiting, and she looked very sweet indeed, with her corn yellow hair fluffed beneath her neat blue hat, her eyes eager, her cheeks, usually pale, flushed with this unusual excitement. Her suit was neat and trim, though made of cheap material.
“You’re right on time to the very minute, aren’t you, Miss Dolittle?” she said happily, as she opened the door to admit her new friend.
“I sure am,” was the bright reply. “I’m the original on the dot man, or young lady, I should say.” But while Bobs was speaking there was misgivings in her heart. She had forgotten to ask Gloria what she ought to do about her name. Should they all be Dolittles or Vandergrifts? She decided to take Nell into her confidence and tell her the story of the assumed name.
The listener did not seem at all surprised. “Lots of girls who go out to work change their names,” she said. “It’s just as honest as writing stories under a different name, I should think.”
“That’s so,” Roberta agreed, much relieved. “A nom-de-plume isn’t much different.”
“And so you are a detective?” Nell looked at her friend with a little more awe, perhaps.
“Heavens no! Not now!” Bobs was quick to protest. “I merely tried it, and failed.”
“Well, as it turned out, a detective wasn’t needed on that particular case.” Nell was giving Bob the very information she was eager to receive, but for which she did not wish to ask. “The next day the stolen book came back by mail.” Roberta knew that she ought to register astonishment, but instead, she laughed. “What did Mr. Queerwitz say?” she inquired.
“Oh, they all put it down to conscience. That does happen, you know. You read about conscience money being returned every now and then in the newspapers, but the strangest part was, that that very afternoon Mr. Van Loon came in and said that he had been able to obtain the first volume and wished to purchase the second. Mr. Queerwitz was out at the time, and so Miss Peerwinkle sold it to him for five hundred dollars.”
Bobs wanted to laugh again. It amused her to think that she had driven the better bargain, but she thought it unwise to appear too interested in the transaction, and so she changed the subject, and together they walked up Third Avenue.
“How different it all is on Sunday,” Nell Wiggin smiled happily at her new friend. She had indeed spoken truly. The vendors’ carts were conspicuous by their absence and the stores, if they were open, seemed to be more for the social gathering of foreign folk dressed in their gay best, than for active business. Even the elevated trains thundered overhead with much longer intervals in between, and sometimes, for as long as fifteen minutes, the peace of Sunday seemed to pervade that unlovely East Side.
Bobs, noting a Seventy-fifth Street sign, stopped and gazed down toward the river, and sure enough she saw a long, low building labeled Boys’ Club House.
“Let’s go through this way to Second,” Bobs suggested. In front of the clubhouse there was a group of boys with faces so clean that they shone, and one of these, leaving the others, raced up to the girls, and taking his friend by the hand, he said: “Oh, Miss Bobs, you did for to come, didn’t you? Please stop in by the clubhouse. It will to please Mr. Hardinian.”
Roberta’s smile seemed to convey consent, and she found herself being rapidly led toward a wide-open door. Nell willingly followed. The sound of band practice came from within, but, when the lad appeared with the smiling guest, a young man, who had been playing upon a flute, arose and at once advanced toward them. What dark, beautiful eyes he had! “Why,” Roberta exclaimed in surprise. “We saw Mr. Hardinian the very first day we came in this neighborhood to live. He was helping a poor sick woman who had fallen, and—” But she could say no more, for the small boy was eagerly telling the clubmaster that this was his “lady friend” and that her name was Miss Bobs. The young man smiled and said that he was always glad to have visitors. “What a musical voice!” was Bobs’ thought.
Then, turning to the girl who had remained by the open door, she held out a hand. “This is my friend, Nell Wiggin. I am sure that we will both be interested in knowing of your work, Mr. Hardinian, if you have time to spare.”
“Indeed I have, always, for those who are interested.” Then the young man told them of his many clubs for boys.
Roberta looked about with interest. “Why are there so many wide shelves all around the walls, Mr. Hardinian?” she asked at last.
The young man smiled. “If you will come some night at ten o’clock you will find a little street urchin, some homeless little fellow, tucked up in blankets asleep on each of those shelves, as you call their bunks. Maybe you do not know, but even in the bitterest winter weather many small boys sleep out in the streets or creep into doorways and huddle together to keep warm. That is, they used to before I came. Now they are all welcome in here.”
Roberta wished she might ask this wonderful young man where he came from, but that would not do on so slight an acquaintance, and so thanking him and bidding him good morning, with Nell and Antovich, she again started for home.
Though Roberta little dreamed it, the wonderful young man had come into the drama of their lives, and was to play a very important part.
Such a merry dinner party as it was in one corner of the big southeast corner room of the old Pensinger mansion. The young hostesses by neither word nor manner betrayed the fact that they were used to better things. When at last the dishes had been washed and put away, a fire was started on the wide hearth in the long salon and the girls gathered about it.
“Suppose we each tell the story of our lives,” Gloria suggested, “and in that way we may the sooner become really acquainted.
“For ourselves a few words will suffice. We three girls lived very happily in our Long Island home until our dear mother died; then, last year, our beloved father was taken, and since then I, because I am oldest, have tried to be both parents to my younger sisters.”
“And truly you have succeeded,” Bobs put in. Gloria smiled lovingly at her hoidenish sister, who sat on a low stool close to the fire, her arms folded about her knees.
“But we soon found that in reality the roof that had sheltered us from childhood was not really our own. The title, it seems, had not been clear in the very beginning, when our great-grandfather had purchased it, and so, because of this, we had to move. I wanted to do settlement work, and that is what I am doing now. Lena May also loves the work, and is soon to have classes for the very little boys and girls. Bobs, as we call this tom-boy sister of ours, as yet, I believe, has not definitely decided upon a profession.”
Roberta’s eyes were laughing as she glanced across at Nell Wiggin, but since Miss Selenski did not know the story of her recent adventure, nothing was said.
Turning to the slender, dark-eyed agent of the model tenements, Gloria remarked: “Will you now tell us a little about yourself, Miss Selenski?”
All through the dinner hour the girls had noticed a happy light that seemed to linger far back in the nearly black orbs of the Hungarian girl, but they thought it was her optimistic nature that gladdened her eyes; but now, in answer to Gloria’s question, the dark, pretty face became radiant as the girl replied: “The past holds little worth the telling, but the future, I believe, will hold much.”
“Oh, Miss Selenski,” Bobs exclaimed, leaning forward eagerly and smiling at their Hungarian friend, “something wonderful is about to happen in your life, I am sure of that.”
Shining-eyed, the dark girl nodded. “Do you want to guess what?”
It was Lena May who answered: “I think you are going to be married,” she said.
“I am,” was the joyfully given reply. “To a young man from my own country who has a business in the Bronx; nor is that all, he owns a little home way out by the park and there is a real yard about it with flowers and trees. Oh, can you understand what it will mean to me to be awakened in the morning by birds instead of by the thundering noise of overhead trains?”
“Miss Selenski,” Gloria said, “we are glad indeed that such a happy future awaits you.” Then turning to little Nell Wiggin, who sat back somewhat in the shadow, though now and then the flickering firelight changed her corn-yellow hair to a halo of golden sheen, she asked kindly: “Is there some bit of your past that you wish to tell us?”
There was something so infinitely sorrowful in the pale pinched face of little Nell Wiggin that instinctively the girls knew that the story they would hear would be sad, nor were they mistaken.
Nell Wiggin began: “It is not interesting, my past, and I fear that it is too sad for a story, but briefly I will tell it: My twin brother, Dean, and I were born on a farm in New England which seemed able to produce but little on its rocky soil, and though our father managed to keep us alive, he could not pay off the mortgage, and each year he grew more troubled in spirit. At last he heard of rich lands in the West that might be homesteaded and so, leaving us one spring, he set out on foot, for he planned taking up a claim, and when he had constructed there a shelter of some kind, Mother was to sell the New England farm, pay off the mortgage and with whatever remained buy tickets that would take us west to my father.
“It was May when he left us. He did not expect to reach his destination for many weeks, as he knew that he would have to stop along the way to work for his food.
“Dear little Mother tried to run the farm that summer. Dean and I were ten years of age, and though we could do weeding and seeding, we could not help with the heavier work, and since our mother was frail much of this had to be left undone.
“Fate was against us, it would seem, for the rain was scarce and our crops poor, and the bitterly cold winter found us with but little provisions in store. In all this time we had not heard from Father, and after the snows came we knew the post office in the town twenty miles away could not be reached by us until the following spring, and so we could neither receive nor send a letter.
“Our nearest neighbor was eight miles away, and he was but a poor scrabbler in the rocky soil, a kind-hearted hermit of whom Brother and I had at first been afraid, because of his long bushy beard, perhaps, but when we once chanced to be near enough to see his kind gray eyes, we loved him and knew that he was a friend, and the future surely was to prove this. But, if possible, that dear old man, Mr. Eastland, was poorer than we were.
“Our mother, we knew, was worried nearly to the point of heartbreak, but I shall never forget how wonderful she was that winter. Whenever we looked, she smiled at us, tremulously sometimes, and when our task of shelling and pounding corn was over, she helped us invent little games and told us beautiful stories that she made up. But for all her outward cheer, I now realize, when we children were asleep on the mattress that had been brought from the cold bedroom and placed on the floor near the stove, that our mother spent many long hours on her knees in prayer.
“Our cow had been sold before the snow came, as money had been needed to pay on the mortgage, and so we had no milk. Our few hens were kept in a lean-to shed during the day, but Mother permitted them to roost behind the stove on those bitterly cold nights, and so occasionally we had eggs, and a rare feast it was, but at last our supply of corn was nearly exhausted.
“There was usually a thaw in January, but instead, this exceptionally cold winter brought a blizzard which continued day after day, burying our house deep in snow. At last Mother had to tell us that unless a thaw came that we might procure some provisions from our neighbors, we would have to kill our three hens for food. What we would do after that, she did not say; but, luckily, for the feathered members of our family, the thaw did come and with it came Mr. Eastland, riding the eight miles on his stout little mule, and fastened to the saddle, back of him, was a bag of corn and potatoes. Dear, kind man! He must have brought us half of his own remaining store. Eagerly our mother asked if there had been news from town, but he shook his head. ‘No one’s been through with the mail, Mis’ Wiggin,’ he said; then he added: ‘I s’pose likely you’re powerful consarned about that man o’ yourn. I s’pose you haven’t heard from him yet, Mis’ Wiggin?’
“Mother tried to answer, but her lips quivered and she had to turn away.
“‘Well, so long, folks!’ the old man called, ‘I’ll be over agin ’fore spring, the snow permittin’.’
“We children climbed on the gate and stood as high as we could to watch our good friend ride away. What we did not know until later, was that as soon as he was out of our sight, he turned and rode that twenty miles to the village post office. A week later Mother was indeed surprised to see Mr. Eastland returning, and this time he brought a letter. It was with eager joy that Mother leaped forward to take it, but it was with a cry of grief that she covered her face with her hands and hurried into the house. The letter had fallen, and I picked it up and glanced at it. Father never got there, it said, but when he knew he was going to die he asked someone to write. He had worked days and walked nights and died of exposure and exhaustion.
“Spring came and with the first balmy days our mother was taken from us. We children were eleven years old then, and we knew not what to do.
“‘We must go to Mr. Eastland,’ Dean said. ‘He would want us to.’
“We went, and that good man took us in, and made a home for us until—” she paused and looked around, but as her listeners did not speak, she added: “Perhaps this is all too sad, perhaps you will not care to hear the rest.”
“Please do tell us, dear Nell,” Gloria said, and so the frail girl continued her story.
“The summer following our mother’s death was hot and dry,” the frail girl continued, “and the grass around Mr. Eastland’s shack, though tall from early rains, was parched in August.
“One morning before he rode in town, our foster-father jokingly told my brother Dean that he would leave the place in his care. ‘Don’t ye let anything happen to it, sonny,’ he said.
“Dean, who is always serious, looked up at the old man on the mule as he replied: ‘I’ll take care of it, Daddy Eastland, even with my life.’
“We thought nothing of this. My brother was a dreamer, living, it sometimes seemed, in a world of his own creating. I now realize that my foster-father and I did not quite understand him.
“It was an intensely hot day. How the grass got on fire I do not know, but about noon I heard a cry from Dean, who had been lying for hours on the ground in the shade of the shack reading a book of poetry that a traveling missionary had brought to him. He had visited us six months before and had promised the next time he came that he would bring a book for my brother.
“When I heard Dean’s cry of alarm and saw him leap to his feet and run toward a swiftly approaching column of smoke, I also ran, but not being as fleet of foot, I was soon far behind him. He had caught up a burlap bag as he passed a shed; then, on he raced toward the fire. I, too, paused to get a bag, but when I started on I saw my brother suddenly plunge forward and disappear.
“He had caught his foot in a briar and had fallen into a thicket which, a moment later, with a crackle and roar leaped into flame.
“His cap had slipped over his face, thank heaven, and so his truly beautiful eyes and features were spared, but his body was badly burned when the fire had swept over him.
“The wind had veered very suddenly and turned the flame back upon the charred land and so, there being nothing left to burn, it was extinguished.
“It was at that moment that Daddy Eastland returned. He lifted my unconscious brother out of the black, burnt thicket and carried him to the shack.
“‘Boy! Boy!’ he said, and I never will forget the sob there was in his voice. ‘Why did you say ye’d take care of the old place with your life? ’Twasn’t worth one hair on yer head.’
“But Dean was not dead. Slowly, so slowly he came back to life, but his left arm was burned to the bone and his side beneath it. Then, because of the pain, his muscles tightened and he could not move his arm.
“We were so far from town that perhaps he did not have just the right care. Once a month a quack physician made the rounds of those remote farms.
“However, he did the best that he could, and a year later Dean was able to walk about. How like our mother he was, so brave and cheerful!
“‘I am glad that it is my left arm that will not move, Sister,’ he often said. ‘I have a use for my right arm.’