Part 9 (1/2)

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.”

s.h.i.+ning-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.