"Not yet." Lena May looked at the old grandfather clock. "It lacks two minutes of being noon. They will be here promptly at twelve."

"I do believe that you are all trying to arouse my curiosity," Bobs said.

"Well, the deed is done, so fire ahead and tell me who is to be the victim?"

"Victim, indeed." Lena May tossed her curly head with pretended indignation. "I have nine minds not to give you a single piece of this delicious fried chicken because of that--that----"

Bobs helped her out. "Slam on, your cooking is what you really mean, but of course you can't use slang, not even in a pinch. But, I say, is our honored guest fine or superfine?"

Gloria and Lena May exchanged amused glances. It was the former who replied: "The guest of honor is to be a young gentleman, and, as to his ident.i.ty, you may have three guesses."

This had always been their method of telling each other interesting news.

"d.i.c.k De Laney isn't in town, is he?" Roberta inquired in so matter-of-fact and little interested a manner that again Gloria realized that her sister did not greatly care for the lad who had loved her since the pinafore days.

"Not that I've heard of," Lena May said. "Now you may guess again." But before this could be done, the heavy knocker on the front door was announcing the arrival of someone, and Gloria went to answer its summons.

Bobs skipped over to the stove as she said hurriedly, "Tell me quickly who is coming, so that I may be prepared."

"Nell Wiggin and her brother Dean," was the whispered reply. "He came in on the eleven-ten train. Nell went to meet him and I told her to bring him over here to lunch. I thought it would be pleasant for both of them."

"You're a trump," Bobs began, but paused, for Gloria was opening the door, saying, "Sisters, here are Nell and her brother Dean." Then to the tall, pale lad with the dreamy eyes she added: "This sister is Gwendolyn, who has been ill, and this is Lena May, fork in hand, symbolizing the fact that she is also our housekeeper. Roberta we call Bobs, for every family has need of a boy and Bobsy has always done her best to fill the requirements."

The lad, unused to girls, acknowledged these introductions rather shyly.

Bobs, knowing that he was conscious of his muscle-bound left arm, which he could not move, said at once in her merry, nonsensical manner: "If so many sisters won't frighten you, Dean, I'll retire from the role of brother and let you fill it." Then she added, "I'm not going to call you Mr Wiggin. It is too formal."

The lad flushed in his effort to reply, but Lena May saved him from further embarra.s.sment by saying, "Nell, you and your brother may sit on either side of Gloria. Bobsy, will you serve the chicken? Gwen had her broth at eleven, so she isn't hungry just now."

Realizing that the lad who had lived only on remote New England farms would rather listen than talk, Bobs monopolized the conversation in her usual breezy manner, and often when she glanced his way she noted that the soft brown eyes of the lad were smiling as though he were much amused. But after lunch she spoke to him directly. "Dean," she said, "your sister tells me that you love books."

"Indeed I do," the boy replied, "but I have seen very few and have owned only one."

"My goodness!" Bobs exclaimed. "Come with me and I will show you several hundred."

"Several hundred books," the lad gasped, quite forgetting his self-consciousness in his astonishment at this amazing remark.

Bobs nodded mysteriously as she led the way to the room overhead, where in the dim light Dean beheld old books in dusty piles everywhere about.

There was a sudden glow of pleasure in the eyes of the boy which told Bobs that he was indeed a booklover. "What a treat this will be," he exclaimed, "if I may browse up here when I wish." Then he added as a new thought presented itself: "But, Miss Roberta, I must not spend my time in idle reading. I want to find some way to earn money." Eagerly, anxiously, his eyes turned toward her. "Can you suggest anything that I might be able to do?"

For one panicky moment Bobs' thoughts groped wildly for some profession that a one-armed lad might follow, then she had what she believed was a wonderful inspiration, and she said with her usual head-long impulsiveness: "I do, indeed, know just the very thing. You and I will start an old book shop and you may be manager."

The lad's pale face flushed with pleasure. "Do you really mean it, Miss Vandergrift?" he asked eagerly. "How I would like that."

In her characteristic manner Bobs wanted to settle the matter at once, and so she tripped downstairs with Dean following.

She found that Gwendolyn had gone back to bed and that the kitchen having been tidied, the three girls were sitting about the fireplace talking softly together. When they heard Bobs' inspiration, they all thought it a splendid plan, and Nell said that there was a vacant room adjoining the office of the model tenement that she had been told she might use in any way that she wished. As there was a door opening upon the street, she believed it would be an ideal place for an old book shop.

Rising, Nell continued: "I will telephone Mrs. Doran-Ashley at once to be sure that she is still willing that I use the room as I desire."

This was done, and that most kindly woman in her beautiful home on Riverside Drive listened with interest to the plan and gave the permission that was requested. Moreover, upon leaving the telephone she made a note in her engagement book: "At the next board meeting suggest that a visit be made to the old book shop in the model tenement."

When Nell returned with the information that they might do as they wished with the room, Bobs and Dean went at once to a lumber yard near the docks and ordered the shelves they would need. An hour later Antovich and several of his boy companions had carried the old books from the Pensinger mansion and had heaped them upon the floor of the pleasant vacant room, which opened directly upon the sidewalk on Seventy-eighth Street.

When Bobs left, Dean was busy with hammer and nails and happier, perhaps, than he had been in the twenty years of his life.

CHAPTER XXII.

A CASE FOR TWO

As Bobs left the small shop, she glanced at her watch, and finding that it was nearly four, she hastened her steps, recalling that that was the hour when she might expect a call from the young lawyer. As she turned the corner at the East River, she saw a small, smart-looking auto drawing up at the curb in front of the Pensinger mansion, and from it leaped a fashionably groomed young man. Truly an unusual sight in that part of New York's East Side, where the clothes, ill-fitting even at best, descended from father to son, often made smaller by merely being haggled off at arm and ankle. No wonder that Ralph Caldwaller-Cory was the object of many an admiring glance from the dark eyes of the young Hungarian women who, with gayly colored shawls over their heads, at that moment were pa.s.sing on their way to the tobacco factory; but Ralph was quite unconscious of their scrutiny, for, having seen Bobs approaching, he hastened to meet her, hat in hand, his good-looking, clean-shaven face glowing with antic.i.p.ation.

"Have you found a clue as yet, Miss Vandergrift?" he asked eagerly, when greetings had been exchanged.

Roberta laughed. "No, and I'll have to confess that I haven't given the matter a moment's thought since we parted three hours ago."

"Is that all it has been? To me it has seemed three centuries." The boy said this so sincerely that Roberta believed that he must be greatly interested in the Pensinger mystery. It did not enter her remotest thought that he might also be interested in her. Having reached the mansion, Bobs led the way up the wide stone steps, saying: "I do hope Gloria and Lena May are at home. I want my sisters to meet you."

But no one was to be seen. Gwen was still in her room, while the other girls had not returned from the Settlement House.

"Well, there's another time coming." Bobs flashed a smile at her companion, then led the way to the wide fireplace, where comfortable chairs awaited them, and they seated themselves facing the still burning embers.

"I say, Miss Vandergrift," Ralph began, "you're a girl and you ought to know better than I just what another girl, even though she lived seventy-five years ago, would do under the circ.u.mstances with which we are both familiar. If you loved a man, of whom your mother did not approve, would you really drown yourself, or would you marry him and permit your parents to believe that you were dead?"

Bobs sat so long gazing into the fire that the lad, earnestly watching her, wondered at her deep thought.

At last she spoke. "I couldn't have hurt my mother that way," she said, and there were tears in the hazel eyes that were lifted to her companion.

"I would have known that her dearest desire would be for my ultimate happiness."

"But mothers are different, we will have to confess," the lad declared.

"Marilyn's may have thought only of social fitness." Then, as he glanced about the old salon and up at the huge crystal chandeliers, he added: "I judge that the Pensingers were people of great wealth in those early days and probably leaders in society."

"I believe that they were," Roberta agreed, "but my mother had a different standard. She believed that mental and soul companionship should be the big thing in marriage, and for that matter, so do I."

Ralph felt awed. This was a very different girl from the hoidenish young would-be detective with whom he had so brief an acquaintance.

"Miss Vandergrift," he said impulsively, "I wish I had a sister like you, and wouldn't my mother be pleased, though, if you were her daughter. A girl, I am sure, would have been more of a comfort and companion to her when my brother Desmond died." Then he added, after a moment of silence: "I can get your point of view, all right. I wouldn't break my mother's heart by pretending to drown myself, not even if the heavens fell."

"I'd like to know your mother," Roberta said. "She must be a wonderful woman."

"She is!" the lad declared. "I want you to meet her as soon as she returns. Just now she is touring the West with friends, but, to get back to Marilyn Pensinger. From the little that we know of her family, I conclude that her mother was a sn.o.b and placed social distinction above her daughter's happiness. But, the very fact that the father made his will as he did, proves, doesn't it, that he loved his daughter more sincerely? He did not cut her off with a shilling when he believed that she had eloped with a foreign musician. Instead, he arranged so that a descendant of that Hungarian, whose name we do not even know, would inherit all that Mr. Pensinger possessed. But this isn't getting us anywhere. Do you happen to know anyone who has recently come over from Hungary?"

Bobs smiled. "Wouldn't that be grasping at straws?"

"Maybe, but do you?"