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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 title, 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 classes 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 shelling 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 grass 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.
“It was an intensely hot day. How the grass got on fire I do not know, but about noon I heard a cry from Dean, who had been lying for hours on the ground in the shade of the shack reading a book of poetry that a traveling missionary had brought to him. He had visited us six months before and had promised the next time he came that he would bring a book for my brother.
“When I heard Dean’s cry of alarm and saw him leap to his feet and run toward a swiftly approaching column of smoke, I also ran, but not being as fleet of foot, I was soon far behind him. He had caught up a burlap bag as he passed a shed; then, on he raced toward the fire. I, too, paused to get a bag, but when I started on I saw my brother suddenly plunge forward and disappear.
“He had caught his foot in a briar and had fallen into a thicket which, a moment later, with a crackle and roar leaped into flame.
“His cap had slipped over his face, thank heaven, and so his truly beautiful eyes and features were spared, but his body was badly burned when the fire had swept over him.
“The wind had veered very suddenly and turned the flame back upon the charred land and so, there being nothing left to burn, it was extinguished.
“It was at that moment that Daddy Eastland returned. He lifted my unconscious brother out of the black, burnt thicket and carried him to the shack.
“‘Boy! Boy!’ he said, and I never will forget the sob there was in his voice. ‘Why did you say ye’d take care of the old place with your life? ’Twasn’t worth one hair on yer head.’
“But Dean was not dead. Slowly, so slowly he came back to life, but his left arm was burned to the bone and his side beneath it. Then, because of the pain, his muscles tightened and he could not move his arm.
“We were so far from town that perhaps he did not have just the right care. Once a month a quack physician made the rounds of those remote farms.
“However, he did the best that he could, and a year later Dean was able to walk about. How like our mother he was, so brave and cheerful!
“‘I am glad that it is my left arm that will not move, Sister,’ he often said. ‘I have a use for my right arm.’
“Our foster-father, noting how it pleased the lad, invented tasks around the farm that a one-armed boy could do to help, but when he was fourteen years of age I discovered what he had meant when he said that he had a use for his right arm. He had a little den of his own in the loft of the old barn with a big opening that overlooked meadow lands, a winding silver ribbon of a river and distant hills, and there he spent hours every day writing.
“At last he confessed that he was trying to make verse like that in his one greatly treasured book. It was his joy, and he had so little that I encouraged him, though I could not understand his poetry. I am more like our father, who was a faithful plodding farmer, and Dean is like our mother, who could tell such wonderful stories out of her own head.
“At last, when I was eighteen years old, I told Daddy Eastland that I wanted to go to the city to earn my own way and send some money back for Dean. How the lad grieved when I left, for he said that he was the one who should go out in the world and work for both of us, but I told him to keep on with his writing and that maybe, some day, he would be able to earn money with his poetry.
“So I came to town and began as an errand girl in a big department store.
“Now I earn eighteen dollars a week and I send half of it back to the little rocky farm in New England. Too, I send magazines and books, but now a new problem has presented itself. Mr. Eastland has died, and Dean is alone, and so I have sent for him to come and live with me.
“How glad I shall be to see him, but I dread having him know where I live. He will guess at once that I chose a basement room that I might have money to send to him.”
It was Miss Selenski who interrupted: “Miss Wiggin,” she said, “while you have been talking, I have chosen you to be my successor. Tomorrow I am to be married, and I promised the ladies who built the model tenements that I would find someone fitted to take my place before I left. The pay is better than you are getting. It is twenty-five dollars a week, with a sunny little apartment to live in. I want all of you girls to come to my wedding and then, when I am gone, Miss Wiggin, you can move right in, and you will be there to welcome that wonderful brother of yours.”
It would be hard to imagine a happier girl than Nell when she learned that a brighter future awaited her than she had dared to dream. She tried to thank her benefactor, but her sensitive lips quivered and the girls knew that she was so overcome with emotion that she might cry, and so Miss Selenski began at once to tell them about her wedding plans, and then, soon after she had finished, the girls who had been invited for tea arrived. Miss Selenski knew many of them, and so the conversation became general and little Nell Wiggin was permitted to quietly become accustomed to her wonderful good fortune before she was again asked to join in the conversation. Bobs walked with her to the elevated, and merry plans she laid for the pleasant times the Vandergrifts were to have with their new neighbors.
CHAPTER XV.
THE DETECTIVE DETECTED
One Monday, at high noon, the pretty Miss Selenski was married in the Hungarian church and her four new friends were among the many foreign women who came to wish their kindly neighbor much happiness in her new life.
Gloria had been pleased with the earnest face of the man who had won the love of little Miss Selenski, and when the smiling pair rode away on an automobile delivery truck, which was their very own, the Vandergrift girls, with Nell Wiggin, stood on a crowded street corner and waved and nodded, promising that very soon they would visit the little home, with a yard around it, that was out near the woodsy Bronx Park.
Bobs at the last moment had tied an old shoe to the back of the truck with a white ribbon, and there it hung dangling and bobbing in a manner most festive, while through a small hole in the sole of it a stream of rice trickled, but in the thronging, surging masses of East Side humanity this little drama was scarcely noticed.
When Mr. and Mrs. Cheniska had disappeared up Third Avenue, Gloria turned to smile at little Nell Wiggin.
“Now, let us make haste to get your new apartment in order that you may wire your brother to come at once; that is, if a wire will reach him.”
“Yes, indeed it will, and he is eagerly awaiting it,” Nell happily replied. “Since our foster-father’s death my brother has been living in town with the missionary of whom I told you, the one who used to visit the remote farms and who brought my brother, years ago, his first book of poetry. They have been close friends ever since.”
But when the girls reached the little apartment, they found that there was nothing to be done. It was in perfect order, and the thoughtful bride had even left part of her wedding flowers that they might be there to welcome the new agent of the model tenements.
“There seems to be nothing to do here,” beamingly Miss Wiggin said. “Perhaps I would better go at once to my room and pack.”
“I will go with you and help,” Bobs told her.
“Then both of you come to the Pensinger mansion for lunch,” Lena May suggested.
“What did you do about notifying Mr. Queerwitz?” Bobs inquired an hour later as the two girls started down Fourth Avenue toward the basement home of Nell Wiggin.
“Nothing as yet. That is, I merely telephoned that I would not be there today. I suppose I will have to give two weeks’ notice. Let us go there at once and I will do so.”
When the two girls entered the Queerwitz Antique Shop, Miss Peerwinkle seemed to be much excited because of their arrival and, hastening to the rear door, which was labeled “No Admittance,” she gave three sharp raps and then hurried back and took up her post near the front door, as though to prevent escape in that direction.
Bobs looked all around, wondering if there was a customer in the store who was being watched, but she and Nell seemed to be the only other occupants of the place. To add to the mysteriousness, Miss Harriet Dingley, upon receiving a nod from the head lady, walked to the entrance of the cloakroom, deliberately turned the key and put it in her pocket.
Bobs, always on the alert, noted all this and marveled at it. Surely Nell Wiggin had done nothing to arouse the suspicion of Mr. Queerwitz! Then, suddenly, a very possible solution of the mystery flashed into Roberta’s consciousness.
Undoubtedly Mr. Queerwitz suspected that the late Miss Dolittle had something to do with the disappearance, reappearance and subsequent sale of the rare old book. She well knew how enraged the grasping shopkeeper would be if he learned that he had received only half as much for the second volume as had been paid by Mr. Van Loon for the first, and if that gentleman had described the girl who had sold the book to him! Bobs actually smiled as she thought, “I guess I’m trapped all right. A fine detective I would make when I never even thought to wear a disguise. Well, the game’s up!”
She knew that she ought to feel troubled when she saw Mr. Queerwitz emerge from his secret sanctum and approach her, looking about as friendly as a thunder cloud, but, instead, that irrepressible girl felt amused as though she were embarking upon another interesting adventure, and she actually smiled to greet him. Bobs was depending upon her natural quick-wittedness to save her from whatever avalanche of wrath was about to descend upon her.
She had glanced beyond the man, then suddenly she stared as though amazed at what she saw back of him. The shopkeeper, noting this, turned and observed that in his haste he had neglected to latch the door labeled “No Admittance,” and that a draught of air had opened it.
Beyond plainly were seen several workmen engaged in making antique furniture. Mr. Queerwitz looked sharply at the girl, trying to learn, if possible, how much of his secret had been revealed to her.
His anger increased when he saw that her eyes were laughing. “What puzzles me,” she was saying, innocently, “is how you can make things look worm-eaten as well as time-worn.”
Whatever accusations might have been on the lips of Mr. Queerwitz when he approached Roberta, they were never uttered. Instead he turned and walked rapidly back to his workshop and closed the door, none too quietly, but in a manner that seemed to convince Miss Peerwinkle that she and Miss Dingley need no longer guard the entrances.
How Bobs wanted to laugh, but instead she walked over to Nell Wiggin, who had been collecting the few things that she had at the shop.
“Have you given notice?” Roberta inquired.
“I wrote a note and asked Miss Peerwinkle to give it to Mr. Queerwitz. Come, let us go.”
Half an hour later Nell Wiggin was packing her few garments in a suitcase, while Roberta tied up the precious books. Two hours later the new agent of the model tenements was established in the sunny apartment and her row of red-bound books stood on one shelf of the built-in bookcase.
“Now I will wire my brother Dean that he may come as soon as he wishes; and oh, how I do hope that will be soon,” Nell said as she happily surveyed the pleasantest place that she had ever called home.
The message was sent when they were on their way to the Pensinger mansion for lunch.
“I must not remain long,” the new agent told Gloria, “for I promised Mrs. Doran-Ashley that I would be on duty at one.”
Every little while during that noon meal Bobs would look up with laughing eyes. At last she told the cause of her mirth. “I am wondering what Mr. James Jewett thinks of his assistant detective,” she remarked. “I am so glad that I gave the name Miss Dolittle. Now I can retire from the profession without being traced.”
“Oh, good, here comes the postman,” Lena May declared as she rose and went to the side door to meet the mail-carrier. Gloria looked up eagerly. She was always hoping that Gwendolyn would write. The letters that she had sent to the Newport home of the schoolmate whom Gwendolyn had said that she was going to visit, had been returned, marked “Whereabouts not known.”
There were two letters and both were for Bobs. One was a bulging missive from her Long Island friend, Dick De Laney, but it was at the other that the girl stared as though in uncomprehending amazement. The cause of her very evident astonishment was the printed return address in the upper left-hand corner. It was “Fourth Avenue Branch, Burns Detective Agency.” Then she glanced, still puzzled, at her own name, which was written, not typed.
“Miss Roberta Vandergrift,” she read aloud. Then suddenly she laughed, and looking up at the other girls who, all interest, were awaiting an explanation of her queer conduct, she exclaimed: “The amateur detective has been detected, but how under the shining heavens did Mr. James Jewett know that my name wasn’t Miss Dolittle?”
Gloria smiled. “You haven’t much faith, it would seem, in his ability as a detective. What has he written, Bobs?”
There were few words in the message:
“Miss Vandergrift, please report at this office at once, as we have need of your services. Signed. J. G. Jewett.”
“Well, I’ll be flabbergasted!” Roberta ejaculated. “But I must confess I am curious, and so I will immediately, if not sooner, hie me down that way. Wait a jiff, Miss Wiggin. I’ll walk along with you.”
When Roberta and Nell were gone, Gloria found the bulging letter from Bobs’ oldest friend, Dick De Laney, lying on the table unopened. The girl who was so loved by that faithful lad had quite forgotten it in her new interests. Gloria sighed. “Poor Dick,” she said to Lena May as she placed the letter on a mantel, “I wish he did not care so much for Roberta, for I fear that she does not really care for him.”
True it was that at that particular moment Bobs was far more interested in learning what Mr. Jewett had to tell her than in any message that a letter from Dick might contain.
