Part 3 (2/2)
Bobs was hilariously excited. Perhaps, after all, she was going to have an opportunity to really practice what she had, half in fun, called her chosen profession, for was there not a mystery to be solved and an heir to be found?
CHAPTER V.
A STRANGE NEW HOME
Lena May's clasp on the hand of her older sister grew unconsciously tighter as they pa.s.sed a noisy tobacco factory which faced the East River and loomed, smoke-blackened and huge.
The old Pensinger mansion was just beyond, set far back on what had once been a beautiful lawn, reaching to the river's edge, but which was now hard ground with here and there a half-dead tree struggling to live without care. A wide road now separated it from the river, which was lined as far up and down as one could see with wharves, to which coal and lumber barges were tied.
The house did indeed look as though it were a century old. The windows had never been boarded up, and many of the panes had been broken by stones thrown by the most daring of the street urchins, though, luckily, few dared go near enough to further molest the place for fear of stirring up the ”haunt.”
”A n.o.ble house gone to decay,” Gloria said. She had to speak louder than usual because of the pounding and whirring of the machinery in the neighboring factory. Lena May wondered if anywhere in all the world there were still peaceful s.p.a.ces where birds sang, or where the only sound was the murmuring of the wind in the trees.
”Is it never still here?” she turned big inquiring eyes toward their guide.
”Never,” Miss Selenski told her. ”That is, not for more than a minute at a time, between s.h.i.+fts, for when the day work stops the night work begins.”
”Many of the workers are women, are they not?” Gloria was looking at the windows of the factory where many foreign women could be seen standing at long tables.
”They leave their children at the Settlement House. They work on the day s.h.i.+ft, 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 able to sleep in the midst of such noise, when we have been used to such silent nights at home?”
”I don't much wonder that you ask,” Bobs laughingly exclaimed, as she thrust 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 of its whistle, which was repeated time and again.
”You won't mind the noises when you get used to them,” Miss Selenski told them cheerfully. ”I lived on Seventy-sixth Street, right under the Third Avenue L, and the only time I woke up was when the trains stopped running. The sudden stillness startles one, I suppose.”
Lena May said nothing, but she was remembering what Bobs had said when they 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 live here for a time and bring a little of the brightness I have known into their lives, for they must be very drab.”
”Just wait here a minute,” Miss Selenski was saying, ”and I'll run over to the grocery and get the key.”
She was back in an incredibly short time and found the three girls examining with great interest the heavy front door, which had wide panels, a shapely fan light over them, with beautiful emerald gla.s.s panes on each side.
”I simply adore this knocker,” Bobs declared, jubilantly. ”Hark, let's hear the echoes.”
The knocker was lifted and dropped again, but though they all listened intently, a sudden confusion on the river made it impossible to hear aught else.
”My private opinion is that Marilyn's ghost would much prefer some other spot for midnight prowls,” Bobs remarked, as the old key was being fitted into the queerly designed lock. ”Imagine a beautiful, sensitive girl of seventy-five years ago trying to prowl down there where barges are tied to soot-black docks and where derricks are emptying coal into waiting trucks. No really romantic ghost, such as I am sure Marilyn Pensinger must be, would care to prowl around here.”
Miss Selenski smiled at Bobs' nonsense. ”I'm glad you feel that way,” she said, ”for, of course, if you don't believe in the ghost, you won't mind renting the house.”
At that moment the derrick of which Bobs had spoken emptied a great bucket of coal with a deafening roar, and a wind blowing from the river sent the cloud of black dust hurling toward them.
”Quick! Duck inside!” Bobs cautioned, as they all leaped within and closed the door with a bang.
”Jimminy-crickets!” she then e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, using her favorite tom-boy expression. ”The man who has this place to rent can't advertise it as clean and quiet, a good place for nervous people to recuperate.” Then with a wry face toward her older sister. ”I can't imagine Gwen in this house, can you?”
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