Bobs, a Girl Detective

  CHAPTER V. A STRANGE NEW HOME

  Lena May's clasp on the hand of her older sister grew unconsciouslytighter as they passed a noisy tobacco factory which faced the East Riverand loomed, smoke-blackened and huge.

  The old Pensinger mansion was just beyond, set far back on what had oncebeen a beautiful lawn, reaching to the river's edge, but which was nowhard ground with here and there a half-dead tree struggling to livewithout care. A wide road now separated it from the river, which waslined as far up and down as one could see with wharves, to which coal andlumber barges were tied.

  The house did indeed look as though it were a century old. The windowshad never been boarded up, and many of the panes had been broken bystones thrown by the most daring of the street urchins, though, luckily,few dared go near enough to further molest the place for fear of stirringup the "haunt."

  "A noble house gone to decay," Gloria said. She had to speak louder thanusual because of the pounding and whirring of the machinery in theneighboring factory. Lena May wondered if anywhere in all the world therewere still peaceful spaces where birds sang, or where the only sound wasthe murmuring of the wind in the trees.

  "Is it never still here?" she turned big inquiring eyes toward theirguide.

  "Never," Miss Selenski told her. "That is, not for more than a minute ata time, between shifts, for when the day work stops the night workbegins."

  "Many of the workers are women, are they not?" Gloria was looking at thewindows of the factory where many foreign women could be seen standing atlong tables.

  "They leave their children at the Settlement House. They work on the dayshift, and the men, if they can be made to work at all, go on at night."

  "Oh, Gloria!" this appealingly from the youngest, "will we ever be ableto sleep in the midst of such noise, when we have been used to suchsilent nights at home?"

  "I don't much wonder that you ask," Bobs laughingly exclaimed, as shethrust her fingers in her ears, for at that moment a tug on the river,not a stone's throw away from them, rent the air with a shrill blast ofits whistle, which was repeated time and again.

  "You won't mind the noises when you get used to them," Miss Selenski toldthem cheerfully. "I lived on Seventy-sixth Street, right under the ThirdAvenue L, and the only time I woke up was when the trains stoppedrunning. The sudden stillness startles one, I suppose."

  Lena May said nothing, but she was remembering what Bobs had said whenthey had left the Third Avenue Elevated: "Now we are to see how the'other half' lives."

  "Poor other half!" the young girl thought. "I ought to be willing to livehere for a time and bring a little of the brightness I have known intotheir lives, for they must be very drab."

  "Just wait here a minute," Miss Selenski was saying, "and I'll run overto the grocery and get the key."

  She was back in an incredibly short time and found the three girlsexamining with great interest the heavy front door, which had widepanels, a shapely fan light over them, with beautiful emerald glass paneson each side.

  "I simply adore this knocker," Bobs declared, jubilantly. "Hark, let'shear the echoes."

  The knocker was lifted and dropped again, but though they all listenedintently, a sudden confusion on the river made it impossible to hearaught else.

  "My private opinion is that Marilyn's ghost would much prefer some otherspot for midnight prowls," Bobs remarked, as the old key was being fittedinto the queerly designed lock. "Imagine a beautiful, sensitive girl ofseventy-five years ago trying to prowl down there where barges are tiedto soot-black docks and where derricks are emptying coal into waitingtrucks. No really romantic ghost, such as I am sure Marilyn Pensingermust be, would care to prowl around here."

  Miss Selenski smiled at Bobs' nonsense. "I'm glad you feel that way," shesaid, "for, of course, if you don't believe in the ghost, you won't mindrenting the house."

  At that moment the derrick of which Bobs had spoken emptied a greatbucket of coal with a deafening roar, and a wind blowing from the riversent the cloud of black dust hurling toward them.

  "Quick! Duck inside!" Bobs cautioned, as they all leaped within andclosed the door with a bang.

  "Jimminy-crickets!" she then ejaculated, using her favorite tom-boyexpression. "The man who has this place to rent can't advertise it asclean and quiet, a good place for nervous people to recuperate." Thenwith a wry face toward her older sister. "I can't imagine Gwen in thishouse, can you?"

  There was a sudden troubled expression in Gloria's eyes. "No, dear, Ican't. And I'm wondering, in fact I have often been wondering thismorning, if we ought not to select some place where Gwen and little LenaMay would be happier, for, of course, Gwen _can't_ keep on visiting herfriends forever. She will have to come home some day." The speaker felt ahand slip into hers and, glancing down, she saw a pleading in theuplifted eyes of their youngest. "I'd _like_ to live here, Glow, for awhile, if you would."

  "Little self-sacrificing puss that you are." Gloria smiled at MissSelenski, then said: "May we look over the old house and decide if wewish to take it? Time is passing and we have much packing to do if we areto return in another day or two."

  Although she did not say so, Bobs and Lena May knew that their motheringsister was eager to return to their Long Island home that she might seeGwendolyn before her departure.

  The old colonial mansion, like many others of its kind, had a wide hallextending from the front to the back. At the extreme rear was a fireplacewith built-in seats. In fact, to the great delight of Bobs, who quiteadored them, a fireplace was found in each of the big barren rooms. Fourof these were on that floor, with the old kitchen in the basement, andfour 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 rentjust one floor of this mansion and then have room to spare."

  But the oldest sister looked dubious. "I hardly think it advisable toattempt to live in this place--" she began. "There is enough room here tohome an orphanage, and the kiddies wouldn't be crowded, either."

  Roberta was plainly disappointed. "Oh, I say, Glow, haven't you alwaystold us younger girls not to make hasty conclusions, and here you havehardly more than crossed the threshold and you have decided that wecouldn't make the old house livable. Now, I think this room could be madereal cozy."

  How the others laughed. "Bobs, what a word to apply to this oldhigh-ceiled salon with its huge chandeliers and----"

  "Say, girls," the irrepressible interrupted, "wouldn't you like to seeall of those crystals sparkle when the room is lighted?" Then sheconfessed, "Perhaps cozy isn't exactly the right word, but nevertheless Ilike 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 youhave actually reformed in your manner of speech, when----"

  "Say, Glow, I'll make a bargain," Bobs again interrupted. "I'll talk likethe 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 theback 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 basement and the rooms upstairs and forget theyare there."

  "If you are permitted to forget," Miss Selenski added, with her pleasantsmile. Then, for the first time, the girls remembered that the old housewas 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 ownancestral mansion, I, for one, think we would be greatly lacking inhospitality if we didn't make her welcome."

  Then pleadingly to her older sister: "Glow, be a sport! Take it for amonth 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 we
re widely different.Her gentle heart was already desperately homesick for the old place onLong Island, for the gardens that were a riot of flowers from springuntil late fall.

  Gloria walked to one of the windows and looked out meditatively. "If thisis the only place in the neighborhood in which we can live," she wasthinking, "perhaps we would better take it, and, after all, Bobs may beright: this one floor can be made real homelike with the furniture thatwe will bring, and what we do not need can be stored in the roomsoverhead."

  Bobs was eagerly awaiting her older sister's decision, and when it wasgiven, that hoidenish girl leaped about the room, staging a sort of wildIndian dance that must have amazed the two chandeliers which had in thelong ago looked down upon dignified young ladies who solemnly danced theminuet, and yet, perhaps the lonely old house was glad and proud to thinkthat it had been chosen as a residence for three girls, and that onceagain 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 wewill take the place for a time; and thank you so much for having helpedus find something. We shall want you to come often to see us."

  Bobs was the last one to leave, and before she closed the heavyold-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 ustogether."