Bobs followed the one ahead, trying to suppress an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh. Who in the world did they suppose her to be? she wondered. The girls had divided into two long lines and they entered the stage from opposite sides. Bobs was thinking, "I've heard folk say it's hard to get on the stage. Strikes me it's just the other way. I jolly wish, though, I had some idea what I'm supposed to do."

Roberta's reverie was interrupted by her kindly neighbor, who whispered: "Gimme your paw. Here's where we swing, an' don't forget to keep your feet going all the time. There's no standing still in this act."

Being in it, Bobs decided to try to do her best, and, having been a champion in school athletics, she was limber and mentally alert and went through the skipping and whirling and various gyrations almost as well as though she had been trained. However, when the act was finished and the chorus girls, with a burst of singing laughter, had run from the stage, the man whom she had first seen came up to her, profuse with apologies.

He had just received a message telling him that Miss Finefeather was very ill and wouldn't be able to keep on with the work. "You're a wonder," he exclaimed, with very sincere admiration. "How you went through that act and never missed so's one could notice it proves you're the girl for the place. Say you'd like it and the position's yours."

Bobs paused, but in that moment she seemed to hear Miss Merryheart's one word: "Don't!"

Roberta thanked the man, but said that her business engagements for that afternoon were so urgent that she could not even remain for another act.

Having learned that Miss Finefeather had been with them but a few days, Bobs, believing that she might be the girl whom she sought, asked for her address, and departed.

Her heart was filled with hope, "I believe I've hit the right trail," she thought, as she hurried out of the theater.

CHAPTER XVIII WHO WAS MISS FINEFEATHER

Roberta stepped into a drug store to inquire the way to the address that she had upon a slip of brown paper. The clerk happened to know the locality without referring to the directory, and Bobs was thanking him when one of the customers exclaimed in a voice that plainly expressed the speaker's great joy: "Bobsy Vandergrift, of all people! Where in the world are you girls living? d.i.c.k wrote me that you had left Long Island, but he failed to tell me where you had located?"

It was Kathryn De Laney who, as she talked, drew Bobs into a quiet booth.

The girls seated themselves and clasped hands across the table.

"Oh, Kathy," Bobs said, her eyes glowing with the real pleasure that she felt, "I've been meaning to look you up, for Gloria's sake, if for no other reason. I heard Glow say only the other day that she wanted to see you. I believe you'd do her worlds of good. You're so breezy and cheerful."

Kathryn looked troubled. "Why, is anything especially wrong with Glow?"

"She's brooding because Gwen doesn't write," Bobs said. Then she told briefly all that had happened: how Gwen had refused to come with the others to try to earn her living, and how instead she had departed without saying good-bye to them to visit her school friend, Eloise Rochester, and how letters, sent there by Gloria, had been returned marked "Whereabouts unknown."

"I honestly believe that Gloria thinks of nothing else. I've watched her when she was pretending to read, and she doesn't turn a page by the hour.

I had just about made up my mind to put an advertis.e.m.e.nt of some kind in the paper. Not that I'm crazy about Gwen myself. There's no excuse for one sister being so superlatively selfish and disagreeable as she is, but Gloria believes, she honestly does, that if we are patient and loving, Gwen will change in time, because after all she is our mother's daughter."

"Gloria is right," was the quiet answer. "I am sure of that. You all helped to spoil Gwen when she was a child because she was frail. Then later you let her have her own way because you dreaded her temper spells, but I honestly believe that a few hard knocks will do much toward readjusting Gwendolyn's outlook upon life."

"But, Kathryn!" Bobs exclaimed. "Don't you know that Gwen couldn't stand hard knocks? If it were a case of sink or swim, Gwen would just give up and sink."

"I'm not so sure," the girl who had been next door neighbor to the Vandergrifts all her life replied. "It's an instinct with all of us to at least try to keep our heads above water." Then she added: "But didn't I hear you asking the clerk about an address? That was what first attracted my attention to you, because it is the same locality as my destination.

I'm visiting nurse now on the lower West Side."

Then, after glancing at the slip of paper Bobs held up, Kathryn continued: "I'll call a taxi, and while we are riding down there you can tell me all about yourself."

When they were settled for the long ride, Bobs blurted out: "Say, Kathy, before I begin, please tell me why you've taken up nursing? A girl with a thousand dollars a month income hardly needs the salary derived from such service, and, of course, I know that you take none. Phyl said she thought you ought to be examined by a lunacy board."

Kathryn laughed good-naturedly as she replied: "Oh, Phyl means all right.

She does think I'm crazy, but honestly, Bobsy, anyone who lives the idle, selfish b.u.t.terfly life that Phyllis does is worse than not sane, I think: but she will wake up as Gwen will, some day, and see the worthlessness of it all. Now tell me about yourself. Why are you bound for the lower West Side?"

Bobs told her story. How Kathryn laughed. "A Vandergrift a detective!"

she exclaimed. "What would that stately old grandfather of yours have to say if he knew it?"

Roberta's eyes twinkled. "Just about the same thing that he would say about aircraft or radio. Impossible!"

The recounting of their recent experiences had occupied so much time that, as its conclusion was reached, so too was Bobs' destination.

"I'll get out with you, if you don't mind," Kathryn said, "for, since Miss Finefeather is ill, I may at least be able to give her some advice that will help her."

Roberta glanced gratefully at her friend. "I had hoped that you would want to come with me," she said, "but I did not like to ask, knowing that your own mission might be imperative."

"No, it is not." Then, having dismissed the taxi driver. Kathryn said: "I know this building. It is where a large number of poor struggling artists have rooms. On each floor there is one community kitchen."

A janitor appeared from the bas.e.m.e.nt at their ring. She said that Miss Finefeather lived on the very top floor and that the young ladies might go right up, and she did hope that they would be on time.

"On time for what?" Kathryn paused to inquire. The woman gave an indifferent shrug.

"Oh," she informed them, "ever so often one of the artists gets discouraged, and then she happens to remember that the river isn't so very far away. Also they just go to sleep sometimes." Another shrug, and, with the added remark that she didn't blame them much, the woman returned to her dreary home.

Bobs shuddered. What if they were too late? Poor Miss Finefeather, if she were really Winnie Waring-Winston, as Roberta so hoped, would not need be discouraged when she had a fine home and a mother whose only interest in life was to find her.

They were half-way up the long, steep flight of stairs leading to the top floor when Bobs paused and looked back at her friend, as she said: "I'm almost afraid that this girl cannot be the one I am seeking. Winnie could not be discouraged in only three days."

"I thought that at once," Kathryn replied, "but she is someone in trouble, and so I must go to her and see if I can help."

In silence they continued to climb to the top floor, which was divided into four small rooms. Three of the doors were locked, but the fourth opened at their touch, revealing a room so dark that, at first, they could only see the form of the bed, and were relieved to note that someone was lying upon it. But at their entrance there was no movement from the silent figure.

"Maybe--after all--we came too late," Bobs said softly, and how her heart ached for the poor girl lying there, and she wondered who it might be.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE LOST IS FOUND

Kathryn crossed to the one window and drew up the shade. It was late afternoon and almost dusk on that north side of the house. The dim light revealed on the pillow a face so still and white that Bobs was sure only death could make it so. For one long moment she gazed before she recognized the girl lying on the bed, and no wonder, for great was the change in her.

"Gwen! It's our own Sister Gwen!" she cried as one who can scarcely believe the evidence of her senses.

Down by the bedside Roberta knelt and took one of the lifeless white hands in her own. "Oh, Gwen," she implored, "why did you do it? You thought we didn't want you. You believed that in all the world there was no one who loved you, no home in which you were welcome. Oh, how selfish I've been! Gwen, forgive me, Sister. I should have tried to help you. I was the one really who was selfish, for I wanted adventure. I didn't try to think what it would mean to you; but O, I will, I will, Gwen, if only you will live. Why don't you open your eyes, Gwen?"

Then, as there was no response from the apparently lifeless form on the bed, Bobs looked up at her friend as she implored: "Kathryn, why doesn't Gwen open her eyes? Are we too late? O, don't say that we are. It will kill Glow. She thinks that it is her fault that Gwen left. She feels that she turned one of Mother's own daughters out of our home."

Kathryn, who had been hunting about the room as though in search of something, as indeed she had been, gave an exclamation of relief and, going to Bobs, she held out a small vial. "Gwen isn't dead," she said.

"It wasn't poison that she took. Just a heavy dose of sleeping powder.

However, she will probably continue in this deathlike sleep for hours, and yet she may soon recover. We have no time to delay. I will remain here while you go to the corner drug store and telephone to my hospital for an ambulance. Just say that it is for Miss De Laney and they will respond at once. While she is unable to protest, we will take her to your home."

Bobs had arisen, but lovingly she stooped and kissed the white face that was so unlike the proud, beautiful one she had last seen on that never-to-be-forgotten day when they had planned leaving their Long Island home.