Roberta's smile seemed to convey consent, and she found herself being rapidly led toward a wide-open door. Nell willingly followed. The sound of band practice came from within, but, when the lad appeared with the smiling guest, a young man, who had been playing upon a flute, arose and at once advanced toward them. What dark, beautiful eyes he had! "Why,"

Roberta exclaimed in surprise. "We saw Mr. Hardinian the very first day we came in this neighborhood to live. He was helping a poor sick woman who had fallen, and--" But she could say no more, for the small boy was eagerly telling the clubmaster that this was his "lady friend" and that her name was Miss Bobs. The young man smiled and said that he was always glad to have visitors. "What a musical voice!" was Bobs' thought.

Then, turning to the girl who had remained by the open door, she held out a hand. "This is my friend, Nell Wiggin. I am sure that we will both be interested in knowing of your work, Mr. Hardinian, if you have time to spare."

"Indeed I have, always, for those who are interested." Then the young man told them of his many clubs for boys.

Roberta looked about with interest. "Why are there so many wide shelves all around the walls, Mr. Hardinian?" she asked at last.

The young man smiled. "If you will come some night at ten o'clock you will find a little street urchin, some homeless little fellow, tucked up in blankets asleep on each of those shelves, as you call their bunks.

Maybe you do not know, but even in the bitterest winter weather many small boys sleep out in the streets or creep into doorways and huddle together to keep warm. That is, they used to before I came. Now they are all welcome in here."

Roberta wished she might ask this wonderful young man where he came from, but that would not do on so slight an acquaintance, and so thanking him and bidding him good morning, with Nell and Antovich, she again started for home.

Though Roberta little dreamed it, the wonderful young man had come into the drama of their lives, and was to play a very important part.

CHAPTER XIII.

NELL WIGGIN'S STORY

Such a merry dinner party as it was in one corner of the big southeast corner room of the old Pensinger mansion. The young hostesses by neither word nor manner betrayed the fact that they were used to better things.

When at last the dishes had been washed and put away, a fire was started on the wide hearth in the long salon and the girls gathered about it.

"Suppose we each tell the story of our lives," Gloria suggested, "and in that way we may the sooner become really acquainted.

"For ourselves a few words will suffice. We three girls lived very happily in our Long Island home until our dear mother died; then, last year, our beloved father was taken, and since then I, because I am oldest, have tried to be both parents to my younger sisters."

"And truly you have succeeded," Bobs put in. Gloria smiled lovingly at her hoidenish sister, who sat on a low stool close to the fire, her arms folded about her knees.

"But we soon found that in reality the roof that had sheltered us from childhood was not really our own. The t.i.tle, it seems, had not been clear in the very beginning, when our great-grandfather had purchased it, and so, because of this, we had to move. I wanted to do settlement work, and that is what I am doing now. Lena May also loves the work, and is soon to have cla.s.ses for the very little boys and girls. Bobs, as we call this tom-boy sister of ours, as yet, I believe, has not definitely decided upon a profession."

Roberta's eyes were laughing as she glanced across at Nell Wiggin, but since Miss Selenski did not know the story of her recent adventure, nothing was said.

Turning to the slender, dark-eyed agent of the model tenements, Gloria remarked: "Will you now tell us a little about yourself, Miss Selenski?"

All through the dinner hour the girls had noticed a happy light that seemed to linger far back in the nearly black orbs of the Hungarian girl, but they thought it was her optimistic nature that gladdened her eyes; but now, in answer to Gloria's question, the dark, pretty face became radiant as the girl replied: "The past holds little worth the telling, but the future, I believe, will hold much."

"Oh, Miss Selenski," Bobs exclaimed, leaning forward eagerly and smiling at their Hungarian friend, "something wonderful is about to happen in your life, I am sure of that."

Shining-eyed, the dark girl nodded. "Do you want to guess what?"

It was Lena May who answered: "I think you are going to be married," she said.

"I am," was the joyfully given reply. "To a young man from my own country who has a business in the Bronx; nor is that all, he owns a little home way out by the park and there is a real yard about it with flowers and trees. Oh, can you understand what it will mean to me to be awakened in the morning by birds instead of by the thundering noise of overhead trains?"

"Miss Selenski," Gloria said, "we are glad indeed that such a happy future awaits you." Then turning to little Nell Wiggin, who sat back somewhat in the shadow, though now and then the flickering firelight changed her corn-yellow hair to a halo of golden sheen, she asked kindly: "Is there some bit of your past that you wish to tell us?"

There was something so infinitely sorrowful in the pale pinched face of little Nell Wiggin that instinctively the girls knew that the story they would hear would be sad, nor were they mistaken.

Nell Wiggin began: "It is not interesting, my past, and I fear that it is too sad for a story, but briefly I will tell it: My twin brother, Dean, and I were born on a farm in New England which seemed able to produce but little on its rocky soil, and though our father managed to keep us alive, he could not pay off the mortgage, and each year he grew more troubled in spirit. At last he heard of rich lands in the West that might be homesteaded and so, leaving us one spring, he set out on foot, for he planned taking up a claim, and when he had constructed there a shelter of some kind, Mother was to sell the New England farm, pay off the mortgage and with whatever remained buy tickets that would take us west to my father.

"It was May when he left us. He did not expect to reach his destination for many weeks, as he knew that he would have to stop along the way to work for his food.

"Dear little Mother tried to run the farm that summer. Dean and I were ten years of age, and though we could do weeding and seeding, we could not help with the heavier work, and since our mother was frail much of this had to be left undone.

"Fate was against us, it would seem, for the rain was scarce and our crops poor, and the bitterly cold winter found us with but little provisions in store. In all this time we had not heard from Father, and after the snows came we knew the post office in the town twenty miles away could not be reached by us until the following spring, and so we could neither receive nor send a letter.

"Our nearest neighbor was eight miles away, and he was but a poor scrabbler in the rocky soil, a kind-hearted hermit of whom Brother and I had at first been afraid, because of his long bushy beard, perhaps, but when we once chanced to be near enough to see his kind gray eyes, we loved him and knew that he was a friend, and the future surely was to prove this. But, if possible, that dear old man, Mr. Eastland, was poorer than we were.

"Our mother, we knew, was worried nearly to the point of heartbreak, but I shall never forget how wonderful she was that winter. Whenever we looked, she smiled at us, tremulously sometimes, and when our task of sh.e.l.ling and pounding corn was over, she helped us invent little games and told us beautiful stories that she made up. But for all her outward cheer, I now realize, when we children were asleep on the mattress that had been brought from the cold bedroom and placed on the floor near the stove, that our mother spent many long hours on her knees in prayer.

"Our cow had been sold before the snow came, as money had been needed to pay on the mortgage, and so we had no milk. Our few hens were kept in a lean-to shed during the day, but Mother permitted them to roost behind the stove on those bitterly cold nights, and so occasionally we had eggs, and a rare feast it was, but at last our supply of corn was nearly exhausted.

"There was usually a thaw in January, but instead, this exceptionally cold winter brought a blizzard which continued day after day, burying our house deep in snow. At last Mother had to tell us that unless a thaw came that we might procure some provisions from our neighbors, we would have to kill our three hens for food. What we would do after that, she did not say; but, luckily, for the feathered members of our family, the thaw did come and with it came Mr. Eastland, riding the eight miles on his stout little mule, and fastened to the saddle, back of him, was a bag of corn and potatoes. Dear, kind man! He must have brought us half of his own remaining store. Eagerly our mother asked if there had been news from town, but he shook his head. 'No one's been through with the mail, Mis'

Wiggin,' he said; then he added: 'I s'pose likely you're powerful consarned about that man o' yourn. I s'pose you haven't heard from him yet, Mis' Wiggin?'

"Mother tried to answer, but her lips quivered and she had to turn away.

"'Well, so long, folks!' the old man called, 'I'll be over agin 'fore spring, the snow permittin'.'

"We children climbed on the gate and stood as high as we could to watch our good friend ride away. What we did not know until later, was that as soon as he was out of our sight, he turned and rode that twenty miles to the village post office. A week later Mother was indeed surprised to see Mr. Eastland returning, and this time he brought a letter. It was with eager joy that Mother leaped forward to take it, but it was with a cry of grief that she covered her face with her hands and hurried into the house. The letter had fallen, and I picked it up and glanced at it.

Father never got there, it said, but when he knew he was going to die he asked someone to write. He had worked days and walked nights and died of exposure and exhaustion.

"Spring came and with the first balmy days our mother was taken from us.

We children were eleven years old then, and we knew not what to do.

"'We must go to Mr. Eastland,' Dean said. 'He would want us to.'

"We went, and that good man took us in, and made a home for us until--"

she paused and looked around, but as her listeners did not speak, she added: "Perhaps this is all too sad, perhaps you will not care to hear the rest."

"Please do tell us, dear Nell," Gloria said, and so the frail girl continued her story.

CHAPTER XIV.

A PLEASANT PLAN

"The summer following our mother's death was hot and dry," the frail girl continued, "and the gra.s.s around Mr. Eastland's shack, though tall from early rains, was parched in August.

"One morning before he rode in town, our foster-father jokingly told my brother Dean that he would leave the place in his care. 'Don't ye let anything happen to it, sonny,' he said.

"Dean, who is always serious, looked up at the old man on the mule as he replied: 'I'll take care of it, Daddy Eastland, even with my life.'

"We thought nothing of this. My brother was a dreamer, living, it sometimes seemed, in a world of his own creating. I now realize that my foster-father and I did not quite understand him.