Part 13 (1/2)
Bobs followed the one ahead, trying to suppress an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh. Who in the world did they suppose her to be? she wondered. The girls had divided into two long lines and they entered the stage from opposite sides. Bobs was thinking, ”I've heard folk say it's hard to get on the stage. Strikes me it's just the other way. I jolly wish, though, I had some idea what I'm supposed to do.”
Roberta's reverie was interrupted by her kindly neighbor, who whispered: ”Gimme your paw. Here's where we swing, an' don't forget to keep your feet going all the time. There's no standing still in this act.”
Being in it, Bobs decided to try to do her best, and, having been a champion in school athletics, she was limber and mentally alert and went through the skipping and whirling and various gyrations almost as well as though she had been trained. However, when the act was finished and the chorus girls, with a burst of singing laughter, had run from the stage, the man whom she had first seen came up to her, profuse with apologies.
He had just received a message telling him that Miss Finefeather was very ill and wouldn't be able to keep on with the work. ”You're a wonder,” he exclaimed, with very sincere admiration. ”How you went through that act and never missed so's one could notice it proves you're the girl for the place. Say you'd like it and the position's yours.”
Bobs paused, but in that moment she seemed to hear Miss Merryheart's one word: ”Don't!”
Roberta thanked the man, but said that her business engagements for that afternoon were so urgent that she could not even remain for another act.
Having learned that Miss Finefeather had been with them but a few days, Bobs, believing that she might be the girl whom she sought, asked for her address, and departed.
Her heart was filled with hope, ”I believe I've hit the right trail,” she thought, as she hurried out of the theater.
CHAPTER XVIII WHO WAS MISS FINEFEATHER
Roberta stepped into a drug store to inquire the way to the address that she had upon a slip of brown paper. The clerk happened to know the locality without referring to the directory, and Bobs was thanking him when one of the customers exclaimed in a voice that plainly expressed the speaker's great joy: ”Bobsy Vandergrift, of all people! Where in the world are you girls living? d.i.c.k wrote me that you had left Long Island, but he failed to tell me where you had located?”
It was Kathryn De Laney who, as she talked, drew Bobs into a quiet booth.
The girls seated themselves and clasped hands across the table.
”Oh, Kathy,” Bobs said, her eyes glowing with the real pleasure that she felt, ”I've been meaning to look you up, for Gloria's sake, if for no other reason. I heard Glow say only the other day that she wanted to see you. I believe you'd do her worlds of good. You're so breezy and cheerful.”
Kathryn looked troubled. ”Why, is anything especially wrong with Glow?”
”She's brooding because Gwen doesn't write,” Bobs said. Then she told briefly all that had happened: how Gwen had refused to come with the others to try to earn her living, and how instead she had departed without saying good-bye to them to visit her school friend, Eloise Rochester, and how letters, sent there by Gloria, had been returned marked ”Whereabouts unknown.”
”I honestly believe that Gloria thinks of nothing else. I've watched her when she was pretending to read, and she doesn't turn a page by the hour.
I had just about made up my mind to put an advertis.e.m.e.nt of some kind in the paper. Not that I'm crazy about Gwen myself. There's no excuse for one sister being so superlatively selfish and disagreeable as she is, but Gloria believes, she honestly does, that if we are patient and loving, Gwen will change in time, because after all she is our mother's daughter.”
”Gloria is right,” was the quiet answer. ”I am sure of that. You all helped to spoil Gwen when she was a child because she was frail. Then later you let her have her own way because you dreaded her temper spells, but I honestly believe that a few hard knocks will do much toward readjusting Gwendolyn's outlook upon life.”
”But, Kathryn!” Bobs exclaimed. ”Don't you know that Gwen couldn't stand hard knocks? If it were a case of sink or swim, Gwen would just give up and sink.”
”I'm not so sure,” the girl who had been next door neighbor to the Vandergrifts all her life replied. ”It's an instinct with all of us to at least try to keep our heads above water.” Then she added: ”But didn't I hear you asking the clerk about an address? That was what first attracted my attention to you, because it is the same locality as my destination.
I'm visiting nurse now on the lower West Side.”
Then, after glancing at the slip of paper Bobs held up, Kathryn continued: ”I'll call a taxi, and while we are riding down there you can tell me all about yourself.”
When they were settled for the long ride, Bobs blurted out: ”Say, Kathy, before I begin, please tell me why you've taken up nursing? A girl with a thousand dollars a month income hardly needs the salary derived from such service, and, of course, I know that you take none. Phyl said she thought you ought to be examined by a lunacy board.”
Kathryn laughed good-naturedly as she replied: ”Oh, Phyl means all right.
She does think I'm crazy, but honestly, Bobsy, anyone who lives the idle, selfish b.u.t.terfly life that Phyllis does is worse than not sane, I think: but she will wake up as Gwen will, some day, and see the worthlessness of it all. Now tell me about yourself. Why are you bound for the lower West Side?”
Bobs told her story. How Kathryn laughed. ”A Vandergrift a detective!”