Bobs, a Girl Detective.

by Grace May North.

CHAPTER I

FOUR GIRLS FACE A PROBLEM

"Now that the crash is over and the last echo has ceased to reverberate through our ancestral halls, the problem before the house is what shall the family of Vandergrifts do next?"

"Gloria, I do wish you wouldn't stand there grinning like a Cheshire cat.

There certainly is nothing amusing about the whirlwind of a catastrophe that we have just been through and are still in, for that matter."

Gwendolyn tapped her bronze-slippered toe impatiently as she sat in a luxuriously upholstered chair in what, until this past week, had been the library in the Long Island home of the proud family of Vandergrifts.

Gloria, the oldest of the four girls, ceased to smile but the pleasant expression, which was habitual to the blue eyes, did not entirely vanish as she inquired, "What would you have me do, Gwen? Fret and fume as you are doing? That is no way to readjust your life to new and changed conditions. Face the facts squarely, say I, and then try to find some way to surmount your difficulties. Now first of all, we ought----"

The dark, handsome Gwendolyn, whose natural selfishness was plainly portrayed in a drooping mouth and petulant expression, put her fingers in her ears, saying: "If you are going to preach, I can a.s.sure you that I am not going to listen; so you might as well save your breath until----"

"Hush. Here comes Lena May in from the garden. Don't let her hear us sc.r.a.pping. It effects her sensitive soul as discord effects a true musician."

Lena May entered through the porch door, her arms filled with blossoming branches.

"Look, sisters, aren't apple blossoms even sweeter than usual this year?"

the slip of a girl began, then paused and glanced from one face to the other. "Gwen, what is wrong?" she asked anxiously.

But it was Gloria who replied, "Nothing at all, Pet. That is, nothing 'wronger' than usual, if you will permit my lapse of grammar."

But the dark-eyed sister threw down the book which she had been trying to read, as she exclaimed, "You both know perfectly well than nothing could be in more of a muddle than our lives are at the present moment and your 'look for the silver lining,' philosophy, Gloria Vandergrift, doesn't help _me_ in the least."

The fawn-like eyes of the frail, youngest sister turned inquiringly toward the oldest. "Has anything more happened, I mean, anything new?"

she asked.

"Yes, dear, we had a letter from Father's lawyer and he states than beyond a doubt our place here on Long Island does not belong to us and, for that matter, it never did really. Grandfather bought it in good faith, I am sure, but he did not receive a clear t.i.tle."

"Then why doesn't our lawyer clear it up? That's what I'd like to know,"

Gwen said, throwing herself petulantly into another position. "Why did Father employ him, if he cannot attend to our legal matters?"

"But, Gwen, dear, can't you understand?" Gloria began to explain with infinite patience. "When Father died, leaving four orphaned daughters, we knew that the fortune he had inherited had been lost through unwise investments, but we did think that the income from this vast acreage and the tenants would be sufficient to permit us to live in about the same comfortable way that we always have, but now we find that even this place is not ours and that we are--well, up against it, as Bobs would say."

"Where is Bobs?" This from Lena May, who was arranging the sprays of apple blossoms in a large pale-green bowl on a low wicker stand.

"Look out of yonder window and you will see the object of your inquiry,"

Gloria laughed as she pointed toward the park-like grounds where a hoidenish young girl of 17 could be seen riding astride a slender high-spirited black horse with a white star in his forehead.

"I do wish Roberta wouldn't wear that outlandish costume," Gwendolyn began, "and what's more I can't see why she wants to be galloping around the country in that fashion when a calamity like this is staring us in the face."

The horse had disappeared beyond the shrubbery. The sisters supposed that the young rider would go down to the stables and so they were somewhat startled, a second later, by seeing Bobs vault over the sill of an open window and land in their midst.

Gwendolyn, of course, rebuked her. "Roberta Vandergrift, aren't you ever going to become ladylike?" she admonished.

The newcomer was about to retort that she hoped not if Gwen was a sample, but Gloria intervened. "Don't be ladylike, Bobs," she said. "Now, more than ever, we need a man in the family. But come, let's talk peaceably together and decide what we are to do."

"All right," Roberta tossed her hat to one side and sat tailor-wise on the floor, adding: "Fire ahead, I'm present."

"Such language," was what Gwendolyn refrained from saying, but Bobs chuckled in wicked glee. She thought it jolly fun to shock "Miss Prunes and Prisms," as she called the sister but one year her senior.

"Gloria, whatever you suggest, I know will be best," little Lena May said, as she slipped a trusting hand into that of the oldest sister.

"Now, tell us, what is your plan?"

The oldest girl was thoughtful for a moment, then said: "Honestly, I don't know that I have made one very far ahead, but of course we must leave here. That is the inevitable, and, equally of course, we must find some way of earning our daily bread."

"Bread, indeed," sniffed the disdainful Gwendolyn. "You know that I never eat such a plebian thing as bread."

"Well, you may work to earn cake if you prefer," Bobs told her, then leaning forward she added eagerly: "I say, Gloria, it's going to be a great adventure, isn't it? I've always been so envious of people who actually earned their own way in the world. It shows there is something in them. Anyone can be a parasite, but the person who is worth while isn't contented to be one. Ever since Kathryn De Laney went to little old New York town to take a course in nursing that she might do something big in the world, I've had the itch to do likewise. Getting up at noon and then dwaddling away the hours until midnight is all very well for those who like it, but not for mine! I've been wishing that something would jar us out of the rut we're in, and I, for one, am glad that it has come."

"Kathryn De Laney is a disgrace to her family." This, scornfully, from Gwen. "A girl with a million in her own name could hire people to do all the nursing she wished done without going into dirty, slummy places herself, and actually waiting on immigrants, the very sight of whom would make me feel ill. I never even permit Hawkins to drive me through the poorer sections of the city and, if I am obliged to pa.s.s through the tenement district, I close the windows that I need not breath the polluted air; and I also draw the curtains."

"I've no doubt that you do," Bobs said, eyeing her sister almost coldly.

"I sometimes wonder where our mother got you, anyway. You haven't one resemblance to that dear little woman who, when the squalid hamlet down by the sound was burned, opened her home and took them all in. We were too small to remember it ourselves, but I've heard Father tell about it time and again, and he would always end the story by saying, 'My dearest wish is that my four girls each grow up to be just such an angel woman as their mother was.'"

"Nor was that all," Lena May put in, a tender light glowing in her soft brown eyes. "Mother herself superintended the rebuilding of the hamlet which has now grown to be the model town along the sound." Then, looking lovingly up at the oldest sister, she continued: "I'm glad, Gloria, that you are so like our mother. But you haven't as yet told me your plan and I am sure that you must at least have the beginning of one."

"Well, as I said before, we must leave here and go to work," Gloria replied. "I suppose the best thing would be for us to go to New York, where so many varieties of endeavor await us. Mr. Corey thinks that there will be about one hundred dollars a month for us to live on. That will be twenty-five dollars for each of us, and----"

"Twenty-five dollars, indeed? I can't even get a hat for that, and I certainly shall need one to wear to Phyllis De Laney's lawn party on the 18th of June if----"

"But you won't be here then, Gwen, so you might as well not plan to attend," Gloria said seriously. "We are obliged to vacate this place by the first of June. The Grabbersteins, who claim their ancestors were the original owners, will move in on that day, bag and baggage, and so my suggestion is that we leave the week previous, that we need not meet them."

"Have you thought what you will do to earn money?" Lena May asked Gloria.

"Yes. Miss Lovejoy of the East Seventy-seventh Street Settlement has asked me to take charge of the girls' clubs and I have accepted."

"Gloria Vandergrift; you, a daughter of one of the very oldest families in this country, to work, actually work in those dreadful smelling slums."

Gloria looked almost with pity at the speaker, who, of course, was Gwendolyn, as she said: "Do you realize that being born an aristocrat is merely an accident? You might have been born in the slums, Gwen, and if you had been, wouldn't you be glad to have someone come to you and give you a chance?"

There being no reply, Gloria continued: "I take no credit to myself because I happened to be born in luxury and not in poverty, but we'll have to postpone this conversation, for our neighbors are evidently coming to call."

Bobs sprang to her feet and leaped to the open window. "h.e.l.lo there, Phyl and d.i.c.k! Come around this way and I'll open the porch door."

Gwendolyn shrugged her shoulders. "Why doesn't Roberta allow Peter to admit our visitors," she began, but Gloria interrupted: "One excellent reason, perhaps, is that all our servants except the cook left this morning. You, of course, were still asleep and did not know of the exodus."

The sharp retort on the tongue of Gwendolyn was not uttered, for Phyllis De Laney and her big, good-looking brother, Richard, were entering the library.

"You poor dear girls! Just as soon as I heard the news I came right over," Phyllis De Laney exclaimed as she sank down in a deep, comfortable chair and looked about at her friends with an expression of frank curiosity on her doll-pretty face. "However, I told Ma Mere that I knew there wasn't a word of truth in the scandalous gossip, and so I came to hear how it all started that I may be able to contradict it." Phyllis took a breath and then continued her chatter: "Your maid, Gwen, told my Fanchon, and she said that every servant in your employ had been dismissed with two weeks' advance pay; and she said a good deal more than that too, which, of course, isn't true. Just listen to this and then tell me if it isn't simply scandalous. That maid declared that you girls are going to work, actually work, to earn your own living."

"I'll say it's true!" Roberta put in, grinning with wicked glee. Her good pal, d.i.c.k, smiled over at her as he remarked with evident amus.e.m.e.nt: "You don't look very miserable about it, Bobs. In fact, quite the contrary, you appear pleased. If the truth were known, I envy you, honestly I do!

I'd much rather go to work than go to college. I'm no good at Latin or Greek. If languages are dead, bury them, I say. I'm not a student by nature, so what's the use pretending; but the pater won't hear to it.