CHAPTER VI.

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Gloria never quite knew what happened the next half hour. It was mercifully always a bad dream to her. At its end something like order and quiet reigned in the old house, thanks to the quiet self-command of the District Nurse. Sal had been removed in the ambulance to the hospital, the little crowd of women sent back to their work, and the curious children scattered to their homes. Not until then did the District Nurse have time to look at Gloria.

“Why, you poor dear! You're white as a sheet! I ought to have thought how it would make you feel! Come with me up to Rose's room. That's the quietest place around here. It's a little haven to us all. She's got Dinney's baby with her now. Since the mother died she's about adopted it. But Dinney pays for it. Dinney's a brave one!”

They now passed up the stairway, and as they came to the gap in the railing that had been the ruin of poor Sal, the nurse paused with a look of anxiety sweeping over her face.

“It mustn't be left in that way,” she said in dismay. Then she called, “Dinney! Is Dinney down there?” as she looked down the stairway. “Someone tell Dinney to bring me a rope—clothesline will do.”

The rope was brought, and Gloria, standing by in wonder, watched the deft fingers weave it back and forth across the danger gap. This was an unexpected type of a nurse's duties.

“There, that will do as a makeshift. Anyway, nobody but the thinnest of them can leak through, and Sal isn't here to lean on it; poor Sal!”

Rose was not in the bare, half-lighted little room they entered. The tidiness and cleanliness of it, however, bore witness to her recent occupancy. On the neat bed lay a baby asleep.

“Hunkie!” Gloria said softly, as she tiptoed across the room and looked down at the thin little face.

“It seems a tiny morsel of humanity to get hold of life, doesn't it?” said the nurse. “But Rose is so careful of it, and Dinney is so insistent that it shall have everything it needs.”

Then she turned to Gloria. “Now sit down and make yourself comfortable, and wait for me. You are not fit to go around with me now. Rose will be here in a little while, doubtless.”

Gloria dropped into a chair. Left to herself, she looked around the plain little room. Her eyes took in the pitiful details—the uneven boards of the floor, the sagging ceiling, the cracked window panes. How sharply the room contrasted with her own, and yet this was the room of Rose—with eyes like hers. A girl who had thoughts and dreams and aspirations the same as she had. As these thoughts went through Gloria's mind she leaned back. The strain of excitement had told on her. Exhaustion took possession of her. She did not intend to sleep, but her eyes closed against her will. How long she sat thus she did not know, but in time there came to her a consciousness of whispering in the room and a baby's laugh. Opening her eyes she saw a pretty picture—a young girl tossing a baby into the air and catching it again, and the baby cooing.

Instantly the girl with the baby caught sight of Gloria as she stirred.

“And so you are awake. You looked so tired,” said the girl.

Gloria straightened and arranged her hair. The many hairpins felt uncomfortable.

The girl with the baby looked at her curiously.

“Why,” she said, “I thought you wore your hair different.” And then she flushed. Her own hair was in a braid, and she flushed still more when, glancing into a little mirror, she looked from her face to Gloria's. She had put her own hair down into a braid to be like the girl Dinney had told of. But how different they were! Instantly she realized that hers was a face without round, girlish curves. But she did not speak of this. She turned to Gloria and said in her quiet way:

“You shouldn't take it so hard—Sal's falling. We get used to such things here.” And she smoothed out Hunkie's dress as she sat down on the window-sill, there being but one chair in the room. “And then when you come right down to it,” she said, “Sal will have the time of her life. I just came from the hospital. She's bad broke, but they can mend her, they said. And if she can stand the mending, what a time it will be for her!”

Gloria's eyes opened wide with astonishment. Rose smiled. It was a smile that almost made her face look girlish. “It does seem awful to talk that way, but it's the truth. Just think of it!—Sal never had anything nice to eat! I saw them bringing a tray to one near Sal, and it held things Sal never tasted in her life. And she has such a nice room and bed.”

“Tell me about Sal, please,” said Gloria. “Her mother seemed to feel so terribly.”

Rose's face hardened. “Well, she's probably forgotten her grief by now; that is, if she's got hold of anything to drink. That's the way she'll celebrate it. She beat poor Sal regular. You know—” Rose's voice dropped a little, as though she hated to say what she was going to say, “Sal isn't just the same as the rest of us. She's always had to lean on things, and sometimes they break with her.”

Gloria shuddered.

“Sal's had lots of breaks; but then everything in this house is sort of uncertain. The ceiling, for instance. The ceiling in Dinney's room came down once before his mother died, and it just missed her. It would have killed her then if it had hit her. It nearly killed Dinney, but he's tough.”

“They will mend the stair railing!” Gloria cried.

Rose's face hardened, and she looked down and pressed her lips against the baby's forehead. It was as though the girl, Gloria, beside her was reaching too far. Lifting her head, she said in a cold voice:

“They don't mend things around here. But maybe they will the railing. It costs money to mend, and they say things don't stay mended. Maybe they don't.”

Gloria sat looking straight in front of her. What a world it was, compared with her own world! At last she said in a low tone:

“Did they mend the ceiling?”

“No,” answered Rose. “But then, it don't matter. She died soon after, you know. The hole is there yet.” Gloria rose; she was growing anxious for a change. Something seemed somehow choking her.

Out in the hall an angry voice was suddenly heard. It was a woman's voice pitched high.

“I tell yez, I'll have the law on thim! It's toime somebody was afther doin' on't, an' it's up to me, with me poor Sal lyin' in the hospital! The one that owns this house is a murdherer! I'll tell yez, it's the truth!”

Gloria was standing with eyes wide opened and face flushed. She drew a quick breath of relief as she heard the voice of the District Nurse.

“Oh, hush! Do hush!” the District Nurse pleaded, and there seemed an agony of fear mingled with the words.

Then came in still angrier tones:

“Hush, is it! Oh, yes, it's hush wid you as wid them all! I tell yez I'll have the law! I'll foind the murdherin' crachure before I'm a day older! You needn't be hushin' av me up! I'm goin' now; it's toime somebody wint!”

Gloria heard the shuffling of the angry woman's feet, but the nurse evidently followed her, as she did not enter the room.

It was on the day of Gloria's visit with the District Nurse that Mr. McAndrew came home to luncheon, which was rather an unusual proceeding for the busy attorney during hot weather. Mrs. McAndrew, seated with her mending on the shady piazza, could see a worried expression upon her husband's face even before he reached the steps.

“Something is the matter,” she said, rising hastily, while spools and scissors fell upon the cat dozing near. “Something is the matter or he would never have come home in this boiling sun.”

“What is it, dear?” she asked, as the middle-aged, slightly bent figure toiled up the steps exhaustedly.

“Where is Gloria?” was Mr. McAndrew's reply, as he dropped with a sigh of relief into one of the piazza chairs.

“Gone with Miss—I can't think of her name—the District Nurse. She would go—you mustn't blame me. Ask Abou Ben if she wasn't the settest little thing!”

“I was afraid so—felt it in my bones. Now, why,” groaned the lawyer, “must she have selected today? And here I've come up home at the risk of my life all to no end! I wanted to make sure she wasn't poking round in that miserable street today, of all days—and you have to tell me sheis!”

“You mustn't blame me,” his wife repeated mildly. “You know yourself when Glory'sset—”

“Yes, but you ought to have been set, too! Why didn't you put your foot down that she shouldn't go off to such a foolish place? No knowing what mischief it has done!” worried a look as did her husband's. Then she added, “If we had explained the whole thing to her at the start, it would not have been so difficult. But how is anyone to tell her now? She is so intense, and she's hardly more than a child to reason with. And in the meantime she's gotten so many ideas into her head that she wouldn't have had, maybe, if she had known the situation from the first, and grown up with it.”

“I acted for the best,” her husband grumbled. “Such things are coming up in life all the time. But when women are mixed up in 'em, there's no making them see straight. It wasn't fitting that Gloria should have everything explained to her at the start. It wasn't businesslike. When she comes into full control of things herself, it will be different. I am afraid Richards is not quite the man to have charge of things down there. I have given him his own way too much. But one has to with Richards. He's a good collector.”

“But the stair-rail, dear,” interposed his wife. “Stair-railings should be secure, above all things.”

“Yes, Richards ought to have seen that everything was safe. I cannot understand a glaring negligence like that. He's always given me the impression that things were kept very fairly shipshape.” Having said this, Mr. McAndrew rose and began pacing the veranda.

“Richards said it was a poor, half-witted creature,” he murmured, as though thinking aloud.

“But, dear,” interposed his wife, “half-witted creatures can be killed!”

Aunt Em's thoughts seemed to be keeping pace with those of the man marching up and down the piazza floor.

“Oh, she won't die. That sort o' folks don't,” her husband answered.

And at that moment Gloria was standing in Rose's room in No. 80, listening to the dying away of the footsteps of the angry mother of Sal, the woman vowing vengeance on the one who could leave a house to tumble down over people's heads. And in with the angry tones were the protesting ones of the District Nurse.

A few moments later Rose's door opened, and the District Nurse, flushed and worried, entered.

“Sal's mother has been drinking, and she's wild over the accident,” she said in tones as steady as she could make them. But Gloria saw that she was strangely wrought up.

“Drink or no drink,” said Gloria, with a bridling of her head. “I should think a mother had cause to be worked up over an accident like that.” A look of hauteur was on the young girl's face. “That such things can be, and no note taken of them, is a disgrace to the century.”

The nurse's face paled, as she looked into Gloria's eyes.

“Don't, Gloria, don't!” she said pleadingly. “It is pitiful enough. Don't—” she stopped.

“And may not one even utter a protest against the existence of such a thing?” said Gloria. “Well, I shall go to the hospital and see Sal. I can at least do that.”

“It can hardly do any good,” said the nurse in a discouraged tone. “But if you really wish to go, Gloria, I will go with you.”

“Very well,” said Gloria, “we will go just as soon as we get rested after luncheon.”

At the corner near Gloria's home, the District Nurse bade Gloria good-by, as she had an errand to do on her way home. Gloria watched her to a car. Then she turned and made her own way back to Treeless Street. It was on the corner near No. 80 that she came upon the very one she was wishing for.

“Oh, Dinney, I am so glad to find you! I want your help. You are a good business man, and I want you to do something for me.”

“I a good business man?” said Dinney, grinning from ear to ear. “I should say! What's your business, Miss?” And having said this, he doubled up with droll laughter.

“Don't!” said Gloria, laying her hand beseechingly upon him. “I am really in earnest.”

Dinney straightened, and then in as decorous a manner as he could command, said:

“I'm your man for business.”

“Very well. Now, Dinney, you're listening. I want you—to—find—out,” said Gloria, impressively speaking each word distinctly, “who it is that owns No. 80. I want you to find it out, and I want you to tell me andno one else. If you will find out andpromisenot to tellanyone else, and will come to me with the name, then I will give you afive-dollar gold piece.”

Dinney's breath was fairly taken away. He stood there on the sidewalk stock still, looking into the face of the girl before him. At last he said in an awed voice:

“Honest?”

“Honest,” answered Gloria.

The boy drew a long breath. Five dollars! Instantly there came before him some little red shoes for Hunkie, and some stockings, and maybe a little red cap. But there was not time to go further into the matter as to what five dollars might stand for. Gloria's hand was grasping his shoulders with a firm grip.

“Will you find it out, Dinney? Will you? Will you come to me straight with the name and to nobody else?”

What she saw of honesty and truth in Dinney's face so satisfied the girl that her hands fell from the thin shoulders, and she in turn drew a long breath as though she had found at last something she had long been seeking. Then she looked down at Dinney. “I am going to tell you, Dinney, just why I am wanting to find out. You would like to know a nice secret; something we can keep to ourselves—a wonderful secret!” Dinney was all expectation. At last he said, “Ma used to tell me things. She told me lots the rest of the folks didn't know. All about pa and how it was when they first married and lots more. I never told anyone else around, as she said not to.”

“And you won't tell this? We will have it all to ourselves, and it will make you want to help me. Sometimes boys can find out things big folks can't. It came to me when I was walking along with the District Nurse that you were just the one to help me. You're so—well, so sharp yet safe. If they suspected, they would not let us know, maybe.”

The two were now walking along in a companionable way back in the direction Gloria had come.

“Dinney, if you find out who owns that house I will buy it. I've got money; Uncle Em says I have. I will buy it and we'll fix it up good.” Dinney's face was aglow, his eyes shone, his breath was drawn sharp and quick.

“Would you put in new stairs and new ceilings and new window panes if you bought that house?”

“Yes, I would,” said Gloria. “At first I thought I'd tear it down. But I don't believe now I would, it's been home for so many. I'd just like to see it fixed up the way it should have been years and years and years ago.”

“And you'd fix the hole in the ceiling?” asked the boy. Evidently that break in the ceiling over the bed that had been his mother's had left a deep impression on him.

“Wouldn't I, Dinney!” And now the girl's eyes shone. “It is a secret worth keeping,” she said.

“I should say!” answered Dinney. “And I'll find out if—if—it takes my life, I will.”

Dinney was young in years, but old in experience. His small figure now straightened with determination, and over his face swept a look of honest manliness far beyond his years. Gloria, looking down upon him, felt glad she had taken him for a helper. “I wish mother had waited,” Dinney said quietly, and then the two parted.

After her late luncheon, eaten alone, her uncle having returned to the office, Gloria was ready for the District Nurse, who had promised to go with her to the hospital. Aunt Em was taking a nap, so Gloria did not disturb her. As the two walked along, Gloria's impatience broke forth afresh.

“A coat of tar and feathers would serve the one right that allows such things to exist!” she said.

“Don't, Gloria!” cried the nurse, in the same tone of terror she had used in the hallway when trying to quiet Sal's mother.

“But I mean it!” said Gloria. “I don't see how the owner of that building with all those trippy places can sleep nights. Think of anyone taking rent for a house like that! I never knew such places were allowed in the market.”

“I don't believe I would be so hard, Gloria, if I were you. Let it rest.” There was a strange note of wistful pleading in the nurse's voice. But Gloria did not heed it.

“Let it rest? Never!” she answered.

The hospital reached, the neatly-uniformed interne who came down to answer the District Nurse's inquiry, assured them that their patient was resting quietly. He even went so far as to say that possibly the fall might work good in the end.

“I only say might in a general way. If the poor creature's mental apathy has been due to an injury of the head, it may possibly be. Do you know the cause of her mental condition?” he inquired of the nurse.

The nurse gave the information desired.

“If that is so, then the second blow may neutralize the first. It is certainly an interesting case.” But at the end he assured his visitors that time only could prove what the outcome might be. “Poor Sal!” said the nurse, as they left the large building, and went quietly down the stone steps. “I wonder if it would be comforting to her to know she is an 'interesting case.' Sal was never interesting before.”

“But just think if he should be right!” said Gloria, quivering with excitement. “Wouldn't it be beautiful, just beautiful, if it should come true! It would almost make me forgive that awful man who did not mend the railing.”

“But then,” said the nurse, “unless life changes all through for Sal, it might be worse to be beaten and starved and feel conscious of it, than to be beaten and starved in a half-demented condition.”

“Oh, don't put it that way!” said Gloria.

“I could not help thinking how little you can see of what her life all these years has been—you with your young sheltered life.”

Gloria's face softened. “No; one cannot discern—that is, I mean I could not before to-day. But anything seems possible after all that has happened to-day.”

It was while Gloria was standing on her own steps, having watched the District Nurse close her door, that she caught sight of a little figure flying up the street. It was Dinney. She waited impatiently for his approach.

“I've got it, Miss Gloria!” he said, coming panting up the steps. “I've got it! I struck the very man and he told me. He wrote it down for me. It belongs to an estate. Here it is.”

Gloria looked down at the card that bore a few lines indifferently traced. But what her eyes met caused the color to drift from her face.

“Are yousure, Dinney?” she said sharply to the boy. “Are yousure? Quick!” A faintness was seizing her.

“Sure,” answered the boy.

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The girl laid a trembling hand upon the door. “I will get the money for you, Dinney, when I know you are dead right.”

The voice was not the voice Dinney knew. Looking at the girl, he saw that tears had sprung to her eyes. She was fumbling blindly with the latch-key.

“Miss Gloria,” he said, in an awed voice, as he took the key and fitted it for her, “don't you go to feeling like that.” Suddenly he was a man in his protective earnestness. “It ain't nothin' to you.”

But Gloria had passed him and was already ascending the broad flight of stairs leading from the reception hall. She had forgotten her key, she had forgotten to close the door. Dinney thoughtfully took the key out and placed it on a stand near. Then closing the door after him, he went slowly down the steps.

Somehow the brightness had gone from the day—he knew not why. But it was gone. He turned toward Pleasant Street—Gloria's “Treeless Street”—but there was no whistle now upon his lips.

It was a white-faced girl that appeared before Walter McAndrew and his wife as they were seated at the dining-room table. Gloria had stood what seemed to her an age by the window in her room, looking down upon the card Dinney had left with her. At last she threw off her hat and jacket, and, turning, went below.

As Mr. McAndrew caught sight of the white, strained face of the girl he pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet.

“What is it?” he exclaimed.

But his wife gave one startled look and then bowed her head as though waiting for a storm to pass.

“I've found it out, Uncle Em!” said Gloria, in a voice that was not Gloria's. “Found out about Pleasant Street and No. 80.” Not a jot did her voice falter. She was looking straight into her guardian's eyes. “I don't suppose you could have helped it. It was my property and you kept it in trust. But—” There was a little wail, and the girl buried her face in her hands and burst into sobs.

“Gloria, don't!” begged Mr. McAndrew, while his wife let the tears of sympathy drip slowly from her face.“I could have helped it—I could have helped it!It is a miserably mean thing.” Mr. McAndrew was drawing his breath sharply. “As you say, the property was left in my trust for you by your father, but I had no need to turn it over to Richards. It should have been fixed up. It serves me right that this has come upon me.” It was the lawyer's voice that broke now.

Gloria raised her head and wiped her drenched face. To hear the words her uncle spoke was a relief to her. Still the fact remained. All she had thought to do toward righting a wrong of somebody's must be done to right a wrong that lay at her own door.

She tried to stand up bravely under it, this girl who had been sheltered and petted and cared for, but it was a hard task. And then there was the shock to all the dreams she had had of playing Lady Bountiful to another. For a few days she struggled and kept up, but a cold she had taken on the last day of her travel, aggravated by excitement, settled into a downright ailment. Very tenderly they coaxed her to stay within the blankets and among the soft pillows for the first few days, and then she stayed without coaxing. The District Nurse was at her side, and another was placed as substitute on her district.

The weeks went by, and gradually the white face took on a tinge of color. Still more weeks went by and the pillows were forsaken for the chair, and gradually Gloria crept back to the life waiting for her. Uncle Em and she had had little snatches of talks.

“It shall be straightened; it shall be made beautiful, this crooked way of ours!” her guardian assured her.

And Gloria had answered with a smile. In the olden days it would have been a laugh, but Gloria must wait for strength to laugh.

It was on a clear early September morning that Uncle Em and Aunt Em took Gloria on her first drive. The small figure of the District Nurse sat beside Aunt Em on the back seat. Gloria sat with Uncle Em.

“Which way?” Uncle Em awaited orders. He did not look at Gloria, but Gloria looked at him. Her eyes were shining.

“As if you didn't know!” she cried. “As if I hadn't been holding my breath to go to the New Street!” But at the corner, as they were about to turn, she caught at the reins. “No, let's leave that for the dessert, the New Street. I'd rather, after all. We'll go to Dinney's House first, Uncle Em.”

Uncle Em nodded gravely. “So much the better,” he said. “Gives 'em time to lay a few more bricks on New Street.”

The radiance of the day seemed to have entered into Gloria. Her laugh ran on in a little silver stream, and people plodding up and down the sidewalks turned and laughed in sheer sympathy.

“It feels so good to get back!” Gloria cried. “As if I had been a long way off. Why doesn't somebody point out the 'sights'? That big stone building, now—”

“The library,” said Uncle Em, and again Gloria's sweet-toned laugh rippled out.

“I don't care, it looks different! I believe it'sgrown. And that block of brick houses—did I ever see that before?”

“You took music lessons in it every week for two years, my dear,” remarked Aunt Em, gently prosaic.

“Oh, I suppose so, in another age! I've never seen it in this one. This is the Golden Age!”

Passing the hospital they saw Sal. She was sunning herself with other convalescents before the door. Her childlike face expressed only calm. She gazed at them, unsmiling.

“Oh, yes, she is about well,” an attendant volunteered, “but we can't bear to send her home. She's having such a good time in her way. No, she will never be any different. It was hoped she might be.”

“Sal!” Gloria called gently, “I'm going to No. 80 Pleasant Street. Do you want to send a message?”

“Number Eighty?” Sal repeated slowly.

“Yes, where mother is, Sal. Shall I take a message to your mother for you?”

“Tell her I ain't been beat once—not nary.”

Pleasant Street was still “Treeless Street,” to Gloria's regret. And they passed the same dreary succession of tenements. The same old little children played in the street. But at Dinney's House Gloria's eyes shone.

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“Oh, Uncle Em! New windows, new steps, new everything!” She was helped gently down, and Rose was there to greet her. How happy Rose looked! And there was Sal's mother in the background, and then came Dinney and Hunkie.

“Ain't it fine!” cried Dinney. Gloria looked at the boy and laughed. “Look at the new stairs!”

They took her here and there, then made her rest a moment in Rose's room.

But it was not for long that Gloria was allowed to linger even in her own house. Her eyes were growing tired, and Aunt Em pressed forward solicitously.

“Yes, yes, now for the dessert, Uncle Em!” said Gloria. She was helped back to the carriage, and then they drove through streets with trees bright in their September dress. At last Gloria bowed her head and pressed her fingers over her eyes.

“You say, Uncle Em, there is green grass at the new house, and trees?”

“Trees,” answered Uncle Em.

The girl still had her head bowed and her fingers pressed upon her eyes.

“I used to shut my eyes as I am shutting them now, Uncle Em, when I wanted to open them just at a right place. You count three when you are ready for me to open my eyes.”

The carriage bowled along over new and smoother roads. Gloria was conscious that it was making several turns.

“One!” Uncle Em said, and Gloria drew in whiffs of warm September air.

“Two!”

Gloria was sure she heard a bird singing—of course, in a tree. “Hurry, hurry!” she said. “Say 'Three,' Uncle Em!”

“Th-ree!”

It was, after all, not much more than a hole in a wide stretch of green grass, with an uneven wall of bricks defining the excavation. But it was the beginning! The beginning!

And trees were dropping gold leaves down upon the men as they worked. The little singing bird was in one of the trees.

“Oh!” murmured Gloria, shutting her eyes again, “I can see better with my eyes shut! I can see a beautiful big house, Uncle Em—my house! It's straight and whole and—happy. I can see Rose and Hunkie at one of the windows and Sal coming down the stairs. 'Miss Districk,' you're there, too. And Dinney, don't you see, is playing on the grass!”

Mary Winship laughed a sweet, indulgent laugh.

“Yes, I see all of it, Gloria, just as you do.” She was gazing with the eyes of faith at the small beginning of Gloria's model tenement house. But gentle, prosaic Aunt Em saw only the hole in the ground and the untidy litter around it.

“I guess we've seen it all,” Aunt Em said. “I'm afraid Gloria will get too tired, Walter. Oughtn't we to go home now?”

“In a minute, dear Aunt Em. Just a little minute more!” pleaded Gloria. “I want to take another look—it's such a beautiful house!”

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