“This is the apartment that we show,” Miss Selenski explained. “The others are just like it, or were, before tenants moved in,” she corrected.
“Say, thisissure cosy! Who lives in this one?” Bobs inquired.
“I do,” Miss Selenski replied, hurrying to add, “But I did not fit it up. The ladies did that. It has all the modern appliances that help to make housekeeping easy, and once every week a teacher comes here to instruct the neighborhood women how to cook, clean and sew; in fact, how to live. And the lessons and demonstrations are given in this apartment.”
When the girls were again in the office, Gloria turned to their new acquaintance, saying, “Do you happen to know of any place around here that is vacant where we might like to live?”
At first Miss Selenski shook her head. Then she added, with a queer little smile, “Not unless you’re willing to live in the old Pensinger mansion.”
Then she went on to explain: “Long, long ago, when New York was little more than a village, and Seventy-eighth Street was country, all along the East River there were, here and there, handsome mansion-like homes and vast grounds. Oh, so different from what it is now! Every once in a while you find one of these old dwellings still standing.
“Some of them house many poor families, but the Pensinger mansion is seldom occupied. If a family is brave enough to move in, before many weeks the ‘for rent’ sign is again at the door. The rent is almost nothing, but—” the girl hesitated, then went on to say, “Maybe I ought not to tell you the story about the old place if you have any thought of living there.”
“Oh, please tell it! Is it a ghost story?” Bobs begged, and Gloria added, “Yes, do tell it, Miss Selenski. We are none of us afraid of ghosts.”
“Of course you aren’t,” Miss Selenski agreed, “and, for that matter, neither am I. But nearly all of our neighbors are superstitious. Mr. Tenowitz, the grocer at the corner of First and Seventy-ninth has the renting of the place, and he declares that the last tenant rushed into his store early one morning, paid his bill and departed without a word of explanation, but he looked, Mr. Tenowitz told me, as though hehadseen a ghost. I don’t think there is anything the matter with the old house,” their informant continued, “except just loneliness.
“Of course, big, barnlike rooms, when they are empty, echo every sound in a mournful manner without supernatural aid.”
“But how did it all start?” Bobs inquired. “Did anything of an unusual nature ever happen there?”
Miss Selenski nodded, and then continued: “The story is that the only daughter of the last of the Pensingers who lived there disappeared one night and was never again seen. Her mother, so the tale goes, wished her to marry an elderly English nobleman, but she loved a poor Hungarian violinist whom she was forbidden to see. Because of her grief, she did many strange things, and one of them was to walk at midnight, dressed all in white, along the brink of the dark swirling river which edged the wide lawn in front of her home. Her white silk shawl was found on the bank one morning and the lovely Marilyn Pensinger was never seen again.
“Her father, however, was convinced that his daughter was not drowned, but that she had married the man she loved and returned with him to his native land, Hungary. So great was his faith in his own theory that, in his will, he stated that the taxes on the old Pensinger mansion should be paid for one hundred years and that it should become the property of any descendant of his daughter, Marilyn, who could be found within that time.
“I believe that will was made about seventy-five years ago and so, you see, there are twenty-five years remaining for an heir to turn up.”
“What will happen if no one claims the old place?” Gloria inquired.
“It is to be sold and the money devoted to charity,” Miss Selenski told them.
“That certainly is an interesting yarn,” Bobs declared; then added gleefully, “I suppose the people around here think that the fair Marilyn returns at midnight, prowling along the shores of the river looking for her white silk shawl.”
Miss Selenski nodded. “That’s about it, I believe.” Then she added brightly, “I’ll tell you what, I’m not busy at this hour and if you wish I’ll take you over to see the old place. Mr. Tenowitz will give me the keys.”
“Thank you, Miss Selenski,” Gloria said. “We would be glad to have you show us the place. There seems to be nothing else around here to rent and we might remain in the Pensinger mansion until you have a model flat unoccupied.”
“That will not be soon,” they were told, “as there is a long waiting list.”
Then, after hanging a sign on the door which stated that she would be gone for half an hour, Miss Selenski and the three interested young people went down Seventy-eighth Street and toward the East River.
Bobs was hilariously excited. Perhaps, after all, she was going to have an opportunity to really practice what she had, half in fun, called her chosen profession, for was there not a mystery to be solved and an heir to be found?
Lena May’s clasp on the hand of her older sister grew unconsciously tighter as they passed a noisy tobacco factory which faced the East River and loomed, smoke-blackened and huge.
The old Pensinger mansion was just beyond, set far back on what had once been a beautiful lawn, reaching to the river’s edge, but which was now hard ground with here and there a half-dead tree struggling to live without care. A wide road now separated it from the river, which was lined as far up and down as one could see with wharves, to which coal and lumber barges were tied.
The house did indeed look as though it were a century old. The windows had never been boarded up, and many of the panes had been broken by stones thrown by the most daring of the street urchins, though, luckily, few dared go near enough to further molest the place for fear of stirring up the “haunt.”
“A noble house gone to decay,” Gloria said. She had to speak louder than usual because of the pounding and whirring of the machinery in the neighboring factory. Lena May wondered if anywhere in all the world there were still peaceful spaces where birds sang, or where the only sound was the murmuring of the wind in the trees.
“Is it never still here?” she turned big inquiring eyes toward their guide.
“Never,” Miss Selenski told her. “That is, not for more than a minute at a time, between shifts, for when the day work stops the night work begins.”
“Many of the workers are women, are they not?” Gloria was looking at the windows of the factory where many foreign women could be seen standing at long tables.
“They leave their children at the Settlement House. They work on the day shift, and the men, if they can be made to work at all, go on at night.”
“Oh, Gloria!” this appealingly from the youngest, “will we ever be able to sleep in the midst of such noise, when we have been used to such silent nights at home?”
“I don’t much wonder that you ask,” Bobs laughingly exclaimed, as she thrust her fingers in her ears, for at that moment a tug on the river, not a stone’s throw away from them, rent the air with a shrill blast of its whistle, which was repeated time and again.
“You won’t mind the noises when you get used to them,” Miss Selenski told them cheerfully. “I lived on Seventy-sixth Street, right under the Third Avenue L, and the only time I woke up was when the trains stopped running. The sudden stillness startles one, I suppose.”
Lena May said nothing, but she was remembering what Bobs had said when they had left the Third Avenue Elevated: “Now we are to see how the ‘other half’ lives.”
“Poor other half!” the young girl thought. “I ought to be willing to live here for a time and bring a little of the brightness I have known into their lives, for they must be very drab.”
“Just wait here a minute,” Miss Selenski was saying, “and I’ll run over to the grocery and get the key.”
She was back in an incredibly short time and found the three girls examining with great interest the heavy front door, which had wide panels, a shapely fan light over them, with beautiful emerald glass panes on each side.
“I simply adore this knocker,” Bobs declared, jubilantly. “Hark, let’s hear the echoes.”
The knocker was lifted and dropped again, but though they all listened intently, a sudden confusion on the river made it impossible to hear aught else.
“My private opinion is that Marilyn’s ghost would much prefer some other spot for midnight prowls,” Bobs remarked, as the old key was being fitted into the queerly designed lock. “Imagine a beautiful, sensitive girl of seventy-five years ago trying to prowl down there where barges are tied to soot-black docks and where derricks are emptying coal into waiting trucks. No really romantic ghost, such as I am sure Marilyn Pensinger must be, would care to prowl around here.”
Miss Selenski smiled at Bobs’ nonsense. “I’m glad you feel that way,” she said, “for, of course, if you don’t believe in the ghost, you won’t mind renting the house.”
At that moment the derrick of which Bobs had spoken emptied a great bucket of coal with a deafening roar, and a wind blowing from the river sent the cloud of black dust hurling toward them.
“Quick! Duck inside!” Bobs cautioned, as they all leaped within and closed the door with a bang.
“Jimminy-crickets!” she then ejaculated, using her favorite tom-boy expression. “The man who has this place to rent can’t advertise it as clean and quiet, a good place for nervous people to recuperate.” Then with a wry face toward her older sister. “I can’t imagine Gwen in this house, can you?”
There was a sudden troubled expression in Gloria’s eyes. “No, dear, I can’t. And I’m wondering, in fact I have often been wondering this morning, if we ought not to select some place where Gwen and little Lena May would be happier, for, of course, Gwencan’tkeep on visiting her friends forever. She will have to come home some day.” The speaker felt a hand slip into hers and, glancing down, she saw a pleading in the uplifted eyes of their youngest. “I’dliketo live here, Glow, for a while, if you would.”
“Little self-sacrificing puss that you are.” Gloria smiled at Miss Selenski, then said: “May we look over the old house and decide if we wish to take it? Time is passing and we have much packing to do if we are to return in another day or two.”
Although she did not say so, Bobs and Lena May knew that their mothering sister was eager to return to their Long Island home that she might see Gwendolyn before her departure.
The old colonial mansion, like many others of its kind, had a wide hall extending from the front to the back. At the extreme rear was a fireplace with built-in seats. In fact, to the great delight of Bobs, who quite adored them, a fireplace was found in each of the big barren rooms. Four of these were on that floor, with the old kitchen in the basement, and four vast silent rooms above, that had been bed chambers in the long ago. Too, there was an attic, which they did not visit.
When they had returned to the front hall, Bobs exclaimed: “We might rent just one floor of this mansion and then have room to spare.”
But the oldest sister looked dubious. “I hardly think it advisable to attempt to live in this place—” she began. “There is enough room here to home an orphanage, and the kiddies wouldn’t be crowded, either.”
Roberta was plainly disappointed. “Oh, I say, Glow, haven’t you always told us younger girls not to make hasty conclusions, and here you have hardly more than crossed the threshold and you have decided that we couldn’t make the old house livable. Now, I think this room could be made real cozy.”
How the others laughed. “Bobs, what a word to apply to this old high-ceiled salon with its huge chandeliers and——”
“Say, girls,” the irrepressible interrupted, “wouldn’t you like to see all of those crystals sparkle when the room is lighted?” Then she confessed, “Perhaps cozy isn’t exactly the right word, but nevertheless I like the place, and now, with the door closed, it isn’t so noisy either. It’s keen, take it from me.”
“Roberta,” Gloria sighed, “now and then I congratulate myself that you have actually reformed in your manner of speech, when——”
“Say, Glow, I’ll make a bargain,” Bobs again interrupted. “I’ll talk like the daughter of Old-dry-as-dust-Johnson, if you’ll take this place. Now, my idea is that we can just furnish up this lower floor. Make one of the back rooms into a kitchen and dining-room, put in gas and electricity, and presto change, there you are living in a modern up-to-date apartment. Then we could lock up the basement and the rooms upstairs and forget they are there.”
“If you are permitted to forget,” Miss Selenski added, with her pleasant smile. Then, for the first time, the girls remembered that the old house was supposed to be supernaturally occupied.
It was Bobs who exclaimed: “Well, if that poor girl, Marilyn Pensinger, wants to come back here now and then and prowl about her very own ancestral mansion, I, for one, think we would be greatly lacking in hospitality if we didn’t make her welcome.”
Then pleadingly to her older sister: “Glow, be a sport! Take it for a month and give it a try-out.”
Lena May’s big brown eyes wonderingly watched this enthusiastic sister, who was but one year her senior, but whose tastes were widely different. Her gentle heart was already desperately homesick for the old place on Long Island, for the gardens that were a riot of flowers from spring until late fall.
Gloria walked to one of the windows and looked out meditatively. “If this is the only place in the neighborhood in which we can live,” she was thinking, “perhaps we would better take it, and, after all, Bobs may be right: this one floor can be made real homelike with the furniture that we will bring, and what we do not need can be stored in the rooms overhead.”
Bobs was eagerly awaiting her older sister’s decision, and when it was given, that hoidenish girl leaped about the room, staging a sort of wild Indian dance that must have amazed the two chandeliers which had in the long ago looked down upon dignified young ladies who solemnly danced the minuet, and yet, perhaps the lonely old house was glad and proud to think that it had been chosen as a residence for three girls, and that once again its walls would reverberate with laughter and song.
“We must start for home at once,” Gloria said. Then, to Miss Selenski, “We will stop on our way to the elevated and tell Mr. Tenowitz that we will take the place for a time; and thank you so much for having helped us find something. We shall want you to come often to see us.”
Bobs was the last one to leave, and before she closed the heavy old-fashioned door, she peered back into the musty dimness and called, “Good-bye, old house, we’re going to have jolly good times, all of us together.”
Two weeks later many changes had taken place. Mr. Tenowitz had agreed to have one of the two large back rooms transformed into a modern kitchen at one end, and the other end arranged so that it might be used as a dining-room. In that room the early morning sun found its way, and when Lena May had filled the windows with boxes containing the flowering plants brought from the home gardens, it assumed a cheerfulness that delighted the heart of the little housekeeper.
Too, the huge chandeliers in the salon had been wired with electricity, and great was the joy in the heart of Bobs on the night when they were first lighted. The rich furnishings from their own drawing-room were in place and the effect was far more homelike than Gloria had supposed possible.
The two large rooms on the other side of the wide dividing hall had been fitted up as bed chambers and the furniture that they did not need had been stored in the large room over the kitchen.
How Lena May had dreaded that first night they had spent in the old house, not because she believed it to be haunted. Gloria had convinced her that that could not possibly be so, but because of the unusual noises, she knew that she would not be able to sleep a wink. Nor was she, for each time that she fell into a light slumber, a shriek from some passing tug awakened her, and a dozen times at least she seized her roommate, exclaiming, “Glow, what was that?” Sometimes it was a band of hoodlums passing, or again an early milk wagon, or some of the many noises which accompanied the night activities of the factory that was their next-door neighbor.
It was a very pale, sleepy-eyed Lena May who set about getting breakfast the next morning, with Gloria helping, but Bobs looked as refreshed as though she had spent the night in her own room on Long Island, where the whippoorwill was the only disturber of the peace.
“You’ll get used to it soon,” that beaming maiden told Lena May, and then, when the youngest girl had gone with a small watering pot to attend to the needs of her flower gardens at the front of the house, Bobs added softly: “Glow, how have you planned things? It never would do to leave Lena May all alone in the house, would it? And yet you and I must go out and earn our daily bread.”
“I shall take Lena May with me wherever I go; that is, I will at first, until we have things adjusted,” the older sister replied. Then she inquired: “What do you intend to do, Bobsie, or is it a secret as yet?”
“It sure is,” was the laughing reply, “a secret from myself, as well as from everyone else, but I’m going to start out all alone into the great city of New York this morning and give it the once over.”
“Roberta Vandergrift, didn’t you promise me that you would talk like a Johnsonian if we would rent this house?” Gloria reprimanded.
The irrepressible younger girl’s eyes twinkled. “My revered sister,” she said, solemnly, “my plans for the day are as yet veiled in mystery, but, with your kind permission, I will endeavor to discover in this vast metropolis some refined occupation, the doing of which will prove sufficiently remunerative to enable me to at least assist in the recuperation of our fallen fortunes.” Then rising and making a deep bow, her right hand on her heart, that mischievous girl inquired: “Miss Vandergrift, shall I continue conversing in that way during our sojourn in this ancient mansion, or shall I be—just natural?”
Lena May, who had returned, joined in the laughter, and begged, “Do be natural, Bobs, please, but not too natural.”
“Thank you, mademoiselles, for your kind permission, and now I believe I will don my outdoor apparel and go in search of a profession.”
Gloria looked anxiously at the young girl before her, who was of such a splendid athletic physique, whose cheeks were ruddy with health, and whose eyes were glowing with enthusiasm. Ought she to permit Bobs to go alone into the great surging mass of humanity so unprotected?
“Roberta,” she began, “do not be too trusting, dear. Remember that the city is full of dangers that lurk in out-of-the-way places.”
The younger girl put both hands on the shoulders of the oldest sister and, looking steadily into her eyes, she said seriously: “Glow, dear, you have taught us that the greatest thing a parent can do for her daughter is to teach her to be self-reliant that she may stand alone as, sooner or later, she will have to do. I shall be careful, as I do not wish to cause my sisters needless worry or anxiety, but Imustbegin to live my own life. You really wish me to do this, do you not, Gloria?”
“Yes, dear,” was the reply, “and I am sure the love of our mother will guide and guard you. Good-bye and good luck.”
When Bobs was gone, Lena May slipped up to the older sister, who had remained seated, and, putting a loving arm over the strong shoulders, she said tenderly: “Glow, there are tears in your eyes. Why? Do you mind Bobs’ going alone out into the world?”
“I was thinking of Mother, dear, and wishing I could better take her place to you younger girls, and too, I am worried, just a little, because Gwendolyn does not write. It was a great sorrow to me, Pet, to find that she had left without saying good-bye, and I can’t help but fear that I was hasty when I told her that she must plan her life apart from us if she could not be more harmonious.”
Then, rising, she added: “Ah, well, things will surely turn out for the best, little girl. Come now, let us do our bit of tidying and then go over to the Settlement House and find out what my hours are to be.”
But all that day, try as she might to be cheerful, the mothering heart of Gloria was filled with anxiety concerning her two charges. Would all be well with the venturous Bobs, and why didn’t Gwen write?
There was no anxiety in the heart of Roberta. In her short walking suit of blue tweed, with a jaunty hat atop of her waving brown hair, she was walking a brisk pace down Third Avenue. Even at that early hour foreign women with shawls over their heads and baskets on their arms were going to market. It was a new experience to Roberta to be elbowed aside as though she were not a descendant of a long line of aristocratic Vandergrifts. The fact that she was among them, made her one of them, was probably their reasoning, if, indeed, they noticed her at all, which she doubted. Gwen would have drawn her skirts close, fearing contamination, but not so Bobs. She reveled in the new experience, feeling almost as though she were abroad in Bohemia, Hungary or even Italy, for the dominant nationality of the crowd changed noticeably before she had gone many blocks. How wonderfully beautiful were some of the young Italian matrons, Bobs thought; their dark eyes shaded with long lashes, their natural grace but little concealed by bright-colored shawls.
At one corner where the traffic held her up, the girl turned and looked at the store nearest, her attention being attracted by a spray of lilacs that stood within among piles of dusty old books. It seemed strange to see that fragrant bit of springtime in a gloomy second-hand shop so far from the country where it might have blossomed. As Bobs gazed into the shop, she was suddenly conscious of a movement within, and then, out of the shadows, she saw forms emerging. An old man with a long flowing beard and the tight black skull cap so often worn by elderly men of the East Side was pushing a wheeled chair in which reclined a frail old woman, evidently his wife. In her face there was an expression of suffering patiently borne which touched the heart of the young girl.
The chair was placed close to the window that the invalid might look out at the street if she wished and watch the panorama passing by.
Instantly Bobs knew the meaning of the lilac, or thought that she did, and, also, she at once decided that she wished to purchase a book, and she groped about in her memory trying to recall a title for which she might inquire. A detective story, of course, that was what she wanted. Since it was to be her chosen profession, she could not read too many of them.
The old man had disappeared by this time, but when Bobs entered the dingy shop the woman smiled up at her, and, to Roberta’s surprise, she heard herself saying, “Oh, may I have just one little sniff of your lilac? I adore them, don’t you?”
The woman in the chair nodded, and her reply was in broken English, which charmed her listener. She said that her “good man” bought her a “blossom by the flower shop” every day, though she did tell him he shouldn’t, she knowing that to do it he had to go without himself, but it’s the only “bit of brightness he can be giving me,” my good man says.
Then she was silent, for from a little dark room at the back of the shop the old man, bent with years, shuffled forward. Looking at him, Roberta knew at once why he bought flowers and went without to do it, for there was infinite tenderness in the eyes that turned first of all to the occupant of the wheeled chair.
Then he inquired what the customer might wish. Roberta knew that she had a very small sum in her pocket and that as yet she had not obtained work, but buy something she surely must, so she asked for detective stories.
The old man led her to a musty, dusty shelf and there she selected several titles, paid the small sum asked and inquired if he would keep the parcel for her until she returned later in the day.
Then, with another bright word to the little old woman, the girl was gone, looking back at the corner to smile and nod, and the last thing that she saw was the spray of lilacs that symbolized unselfish love.
With no definite destination in mind, Roberta crossed Third Avenue and walked as briskly as the throngs would permit in the direction of Fourth. In a mood, half amused, half serious, she began to soliloquize: “Now, Miss Roberta Vandergrift, it is high time that you were attempting to obtain employment in this great city. Suppose you go over to Fifth Avenue and apply for a position as sales girl in one of the fine stores where you used to spend money so lavishly?”
But, when the Fourth Avenue corner was reached, Roberta stopped in the middle of the street heedless of the seething traffic and stared at an upper window where she saw a sign that fascinated her:
BURNS FOURTH AVENUE BRANCHDETECTIVE AGENCY
The building was old and dingy, the stairway rickety and dark, but Roberta in the spirit of adventure climbed to the second floor without a thought of fear. A moment later she was obeying a message printed on a card that hung on the first door in the unlighted hall which bade her enter and be seated.
This she did and admitted herself into a small waiting room beyond which were the private offices, as the black letters on the frosted glass of a swinging door informed her. Roberta sat down feeling unreal, as though she were living in a story book. She could hear voices beyond the door; one was quiet and calm, the other high pitched and excited.
The latter was saying: “I tell you I don’t want no regular detective that any crook could get wise to, I want someone so sort of stupid-looking that a thief would think she wouldn’t get on to it if he lifted something right before her eyes.”
It was harder for Roberta to hear the reply. However she believed that it was: “But, Mr. Queerwitz, we only have one woman in our employ just now, and she is engaged out of town. I——”
The speaker paused and looked up, for surely the door to his private office had opened just a bit. Nor was he mistaken, for Bobs, as usual, acting upon an impulse, stood there and was saying: “Pardon me for overhearing your conversation. I just couldn’t help it. I came to apply for a position and I wondered if I would do.” There was a twinkle in her eyes as she added: “I can look real stupid if need be.”
The good-looking young man in the neat grey tweed, arose, and his expression was one of appreciative good humor.
“This is not exactly according to Hoyle,” he remarked in his pleasant voice, “but perhaps under the circumstances it is excusable. May I know your name and former occupation?”
Roberta did a bit of quick mental gymnastics. She did not wish to give her real name. A Vandergrift in a Fourth Avenue detective agency! Even Gloria might not approve of that. Almost instantly and in a voice that carried conviction, at least to the older man, the girl said: “Dora Dolittle.”
Were the gray-blue eyes of the younger man laughing? The girl could not tell, for his face was serious and he continued in a more business-like manner: “Miss Dolittle, I am James Jewett. May I introduce Mr. Queerwitz, who has a very fine shop on Fifth Avenue, where he sells antiques of great value? Although he has lost nothing as yet, he reports that neighboring shops have been visited, presumably by a woman, who departs with something of value, and he wishes to be prepared by having in his employ a clerk whose business it shall be to discover the possible thief. Are you willing to undertake this bit of detective work? If, at the end of one week you have proved your ability in this line, I will take you on our staff, as we are often in need of a wide-awake young lady.”
It was difficult for Roberta not to shout for joy.
“Thank you, Mr. Jewett,” she replied as demurely as a gladly pounding heart would permit. “Shall I go with Mr. Queerwitz now?”
“Yes, and report to me each morning at eight o’clock.”
The two departed, although it was quite evident that the merchant was not entirely pleased with the arrangement.
“Mr. Queerwitz! What a name!” Bobs was soliloquizing as she sat on the back seat of the big, comfortable limousine, and now and then glanced at her preoccupied companion. He was very rich, she decided, but not refined, and yet how strange that a man with unrefined tastes should wish to sell rarely beautiful things and antiques. Mr. Queerwitz was not communicative. In fact, he had tried to protest at the suddenly made arrangement and had declared to Mr. Jewett, in a brief moment when they were alone, that he shouldn’t pay a cent of salary to that “upstart of a girl” unless she did something to really earn it. Mr. Jewett had agreed, saying that he would assume the responsibility; but of this Roberta knew nothing.
They were soon riding down Fifth Avenue in the throng of fine equipages with which she was most familiar, as often the handsome Vandergrift car had been one of the procession.
Bobs felt that she would have to pinch herself as she followed her portly employer into an exclusive art shop to be sure that she was that same Roberta Vandergrift. Then she reminded herself that she must entirely forget her own name if she were to be consistently Dora Dolittle.
How Bobs hoped that she would be successful on this, her first case, that she might be permanently engaged by that interesting looking young man who called himself James Jewett.
At that early hour there were no customers in the shop, but Roberta saw three young women of widely varying ages who were dusting and putting things in order for the business of the day. Mr. Queerwitz went at once to a tall, spare woman of about fifty whose light, reddish hair suggested that the color had been applied from without.
“Miss Peerwinkle,” he said rather abruptly, “here’s the new clerk I was telling you about. You’d better show her the lay of things before it gets busy.”
Miss Peerwinkle turned, and her washed-out blue eyes seemed to look down at Roberta from the great height where, at least, she believed that her position as head saleslady at the Queerwitz antique shop had placed her.
“Your name, Miss?” she inquired when the proprietor had departed toward a rear door labeled “No admittance.”
Bobs had been so amused by all that she had seen that she hardly heard the inquiry, and when at last she did become conscious of it, for one wild moment she couldn’t recall her new name, and so she actually hesitated. Luckily just then one of the girls called to Miss Peerwinkle to ask her about a tag, and in that brief moment Bobs remembered.
When the haughty “head lady” turned her coldly inquiring eyes again toward the new clerk, Roberta was able to calmly reply, “Dora Dolittle.”
Miss Peerwinkle sniffed. Perhaps she was thinking it a poor name for an efficient clerk to possess. Bobs’ sense of humor almost made her exclaim: “I ought to have chosen Dora Domuch.” Then she laughingly assured herself thatthatwouldn’t have done at all, as she did not believe that therewassuch a name and surely shehadheard of Dolittle.
Bobs’ soliloquy was broken in upon by a strident voice calling: “Miss Dolittle, you’re not paying any attention to what I am saying. Right here and now, let me tell you day-dreaming isn’t permitted in this shop. I was telling you to go with Nell Wiggin to the cloakroom, and don’t be gone more’n five minutes. Mr. Queerwitz don’t pay salaries for prinking.”
Bobs was desperately afraid that she wouldn’t be able to get through the morning without laughing, and yet there was something tragic about the haughtiness of this poor Miss Peerwinkle.
Meekly she followed a thin, pale girl of perhaps twenty-three. The two who were left in the shop at once began to express their indignation because a new clerk had been brought in for them to train.
“If ever anybody looked the greenhorn, it’s her,” Miss Peerwinkle exclaimed disdainfully, and Miss Harriet Dingley agreed.
They said no more, for the new clerk, returning, said, “What am I to do first?” Unfortunately Roberta asked this of the one nearest, who happened to be Miss Harriet Dingley. That woman actually looked frightened as she said, nodding toward her companion, “Don’t ask me. I’m not head lady. She is.”
Again Bobs found it hard not to laugh, for Miss Peerwinkle perceptibly stiffened and her manner seemed to say, “You evidently aren’t used to class if you can’t tell which folks are head and which aren’t.” But what she really said was: “Nell Wiggin will show you around, and do be careful you don’t knock anything over. If you do, your salary’s docked.”
“I’ll be very careful, Miss Peerwinkle,” the new clerk said, but she was thinking, “Docked! My salary docked. I know what it is to dock a coal barge, for I have one in front of my home, but——”
“Oh, Miss Dolittle, please do watch where you go. You almost ran into that Venetian vase.” There was real kindness and concern in the voice of the pale, very weary-looking young girl at her side, and in that moment Bobs knew that she was going to like her. “Poor little thing,” Bobs thought. “She looks as though some unkind Fate had put out the light that ought to be shining in her heart. I wish that I might find a way to rekindle it.”
Very patiently Miss Nell Wiggin explained the different departments in the antique shop. Suddenly she began to cough and sent a frightened glance toward the closed door that bore the sign “No Admittance,” then stifled the sound in her handkerchief. Nothing was said, but Roberta understood.
The old furniture greatly interested Bobs. In her own home there were many beautiful antiques. Casually she inquired, “How does Mr. Queerwitz manage to obtain so much rare old furniture?”
To her surprise, Nell Wiggin looked quickly around to be sure that no one was near, then she said: “I’d ought not to tell you, but I will if you’ll keep it dark.”
“Dark as the deepest dungeon,” Roberta replied, much puzzled by her comrade’s mysterious manner. The slight girl drew close. “He makes it behind that door that nobody’s allowed to go through,” she said in a low voice; then added, evidently wishing to be fair, “but that’s nothing unusual. Lots of dealers make their antiques and the public goes on buying them knowing they may not be as old as the tags say. Here, now, are the old books, and at least they are honest.”
Bobs uttered a cry of joy. “Oh, how I do wish I could have charge of this department,” she said. “I adore old books.”
There was a light in the pale face of little Miss Wiggin. “I do, too,” she said. “That is, I love Dickens; I never read much else.” Then, almost wistfully, she added: “I didn’t have much chance to go to school, but once, where I went to live, I found an old set of Dickens’ books that someone had left, and I’ve just read them over and over. I never go out nights and the people living in those books are such a lot of company for me.”
Again Bobs felt a yearning tenderness for this frail girl, who was saying, “They’re all the friends I’ve ever had, I guess.”
Impulsively the new clerk exclaimed, “I’ll be your friend, if you’ll let me.” Just then a strident voice called, “Miss Wiggin, forward!”
“You stay with the books,” Nell said softly, “and I’ll do the china.”
Bobs watched the slight figure that was hurrying toward the front, and she sighed, with tears close to the hazel eyes, and in her heart was a prayer, “May I be forgiven for the selfish, heedless years I have lived. But perhaps now I can make up for it. Surely I shall try.”
Roberta had been told by Mr. Jewett that she must not reveal to anyone her real reason for being at the antique shop, and, as Mr. Queerwitz had no faith in the girl’s ability to waylay a pilferer, he did not care to have Miss Nell Wiggin devote more time to teaching her the business of selling antiques. This information was conveyed by Miss Peerwinkle to Nell, who was told to stay away from the new clerk, with the added remark: “If she didn’t get on to the ropes with one hour’s showing, she’s too stupid for this business, anyhow.”
Why the head lady had taken such a very evident dislike to her, Bobs could not understand, for surely she was willing to do whatever she was told. Ah, well, she wasn’t going to worry. “Worrying is what makes one old,” she thought, as she mounted a small step-ladder on casters that one could push along the shelves. From the top of it she examined the books that were highest. Suddenly she uttered an exclamation of delight, then looked about quickly to be sure that she had not been heard. Customers in the front part of the store occupied the attention of the three clerks, so Roberta reached for a volume that had attracted her attention. It was indeed rare and old, so very old that she wondered that the covers did not crumble, and it had illumined letters. “Perhaps they were made by early monks,” Bobs was thinking. She sat down on the ladder and began turning the fascinating pages that were yellow with age. Suddenly she was conscious that someone stood near her. She looked up to find the accusing gaze of the head clerk fixed upon her.
Bobs was startled into exclaiming: “Say, Miss Peerwinkle, a cat has nothing on you when it comes to walking softly, has it?”
The reply was frigidly given: “Miss Do-little,” with emphasis, “you are supposed to dust the books, not read them; and what’s more, that particular book is the rarest one in the whole collection. There’s a mate to it somewhere, and when Mr. Queerwitz finds it, he can sell the two of them to Mr. Leonel Van Loon for one thousand dollars in cool cash.”
Roberta was properly impressed, and replaced the book; then, taking a duster, she proceeded to tidy her department.
At eleven o’clock Bobs wondered if she ought to wander about the shop and watch the occasional customer. This she did, and was soon in the neighborhood of Miss Wiggin. “You’re to go out to eat when I do,” Nell told her.
“I’m glad to hear it,” was the reply.
Promptly at noon Miss Wiggin beckoned and said: “Come, Miss Dolittle, be as quick as you can. We only have half an hour nooning, and every minute counts. I go around to my room. You might buy something, then come with me and eat it.”
Roberta could hardly believe what she had heard. “Only half an hour to wash, go somewhere, eat your lunch and get back?
“Why the mad rush?” she exclaimed. “Doesn’t Mr. Queerwitz know there’s all eternity ahead of us?”
A wan smile was the only answer. Miss Nell Wiggin was not wasting time. She led the way to the cloakroom, donned her outdoor garments, and then, taking her new friend by the hand, she said: “Hold fast to me. We’ll take a short cut through the back stockroom. It’s black as soot in there when it isn’t lit up. Mr. Queerwitz won’t let us burn lights except for business reasons.”
Bobs found herself being led through a room so dark that she could barely see the two walls of boxes that were piled high on either side, with a narrow path between.
They soon emerged upon a back alley, where huge cans of refuse stood, and where trucks were continually passing up and down or standing at the back entrances of stores loading and unloading.