“Mr. Hasbrouck? Impossible!”
“Never heard of him,” said Bella, promptly. “Montague Fitzmaurice, I mean.”
“And I never heard of him,” declared Mr. Hammond, both puzzled and amused.
“What?” gasped the girl, almost stunned by this statement. “Maybe you know him as Mr. Pike. That is our honest-to-goodness name—Pike.”
“I am sorry that you are disappointed, my dear,” said the manager kindly. “But don’t be worried. If you expected to meet your father here, perhaps he will come later. But really, I have no such person as that on my staff at the present time.”
“I don’t know—— Why!” cried Bella, “he sent me money and said he was working here. I—I didn’t tell him I was coming. I just got sick of those Perkinses, and I took the money and went to Boston and got dressed up, and then came on here. I—I just about spent all the money he sent me to get here.”
“Well, that was perhaps unwise,” said Mr. Hammond. “But don’t worry. Come along now to Mother Paisley. She will look out for you—and you can stay with us until your father appears. There is some mistake somewhere.”
By this speech he warded off tears. Bella hastily winked them back and squared her thin shoulders.
“All right, sir,” she said, picking up the bags again. “Pa will make it all right with you. He wrote in his letter as if he had a good engagement.”
Mr. Hammond might have learned something further about this surprising girl at the time, but just as he introduced her to Mother Paisley one of the men came running from the point and hailed him: