CHAPTER XI. A QUEER GIFT
True to her promise Roberta had gone on the following afternoon to assisther new friends to prepare for their voyage, but to her amazement shefound that they had departed, but the janitress living in the basementwas on the watch for the girl and at once she ascended the stone stairsand inquired: "Are you Miss Dolittle?"
Bobs replied that she was, and the large woman, in a manner which plainlytold that she had a message of importance to convey, whisperedmysteriously, "Wait here!"
Down into the well of a stairway she disappeared, soon to return with anenvelope containing something hard, which felt as though it might be akey.
This it proved to be. The writing in the letter had been painstakinglymade, but the language was not English, and Bobs looked at it with sofrankly puzzled an expression that the woman, who had been standing near,watching curiously, asked: "Can I read it for you?"
Strange things surely had happened since the Vandergrifts had gone to theEast Side to live, but this was the strangest of all. It was hard forRoberta to believe that she heard aright. The old man had written thathis entire stock was worth no more than five hundred dollars, and sinceRoberta had procured more than that sum for him, he was making her a giftof the books that remained, and requested that she remove them at once,as the rent on the shop would expire the following day.
The janitress, with an eye to business, at once said that her son, Jacob,was idle and could truck the books for the young lady wherever she wishedthem to go. It was two o'clock in the afternoon when this conversationtook place, and at five o'clock Gloria and Lena May, returning from theSettlement House, were amazed to see a skinny horse drawing a two-wheeledash cart stopping at the curb in front of the Pensinger mansion. Thedriver was a Hebrew lad, but at his side sat no less a personage thanRoberta, who beamed down upon her astonished sisters.
After a moment of explanation the three girls assisted the boy Jacob tocart all the books to one of the unoccupied upper rooms, and when he haddriven away Roberta sank down upon a kitchen chair and laughed until shedeclared that she ached. Lena May, busy setting the table for supper,merrily declared: "Bobs, what a girl you are to have adventures. HereGlow and I have been on the East Side just as long as you have, andnothing unusual has happened to us."
"Give it time," Roberta remarked as she rose to wash her hands. "But nowI seem to have had a new profession thrust upon me. Glow, how would it doto open an old book shop out on the front lawn?"
"I'll prophesy that these books will fill a good need some day, perhaps,when we're least expecting it," was Gloria's reply.
Then, as they sat eating their evening meal together and watching theafterglow of the sunset on the river, that was so near their front door,at last Bobs said: "Do see those throngs of poor tired-out women troopingfrom the factory. Now they will go to the Settlement House and get theirchildren, go home and cook and wash and iron and darn and--" she paused,then added, "How did we four girls ever manage to live so near all thisand know nothing about it? I feel as though I had been the most selfish,useless, good-for-nothing----"
"Here, here, young lady. I won't allow you to call my sister such hardnames," Glow said merrily as she rose to replenish their cups of hotchocolate. Then, more seriously, she added as she reseated herself:"Losing our home seemed hard, but I do believe that we three are gladthat something happened to make us of greater use in the world."
"I am," Lena May said, looking up brightly. She was thinking of thesandpile at the Settlement House over which she had presided thatafternoon.
And Gloria concluded: "I know that I would be more nearly happy than Ihave been since our mother died, if only I knew where Gwendolyn is."
And where was Gwendolyn, the proud, selfish girl who had not tried tomake the best of things? Gloria would indeed have been troubled had shebut known.