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, Gwen _can't_ keep 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'd _like_ to 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 pa.s.sing 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 bas.e.m.e.nt, 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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."

CHAPTER VI.

A LOST SISTER

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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing, 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 a.s.sist 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 ma.s.s 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 I _must_ begin 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?

CHAPTER VII.

BOBS SEEKS A PROFESSION

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.