Dud Stone had given her the address of the law firm where he was to be found, and the very next morning she went to the offices of Larribee & Polk and saw Dud. In his hands she put a sum of money and told him what she wished done. But when Dud learned that the girl had the better part of eight hundred dollars in cash with her, he took her to a bank and made her open an account at once.
“Where do you think you are—still in the wild and woolly West where pretty near everybody you meet is honest?” demanded Dud. “You ought to be shaken! That money here in the big city is a temptation to half the people you pass on the street. Suppose one of the servants at your uncle’s house should see it? You have no right to put temptation in people’s way.”
Helen accepted his scolding meekly as long as he did not refuse to carry out her plan for Sadie Goronsky. When Dud heard the full particulars of the Western girl’s acquaintanceship with Sadie, he had no criticism to offer. That very day Dud engaged the store, paid three months’ rent, and bought the furnishings. Sadie was not to be told until the store was ready for occupancy. There was still time enough. Helen knew that the millinery season did not open until February.
Meanwhile, although Helen’s goings and comings were quite ignored by Uncle Starkweather and the girls, some incidents connected with Helen Morrell had begun to stir to its depth the fountain of the family’s wrath against the girl from Sunset Ranch.
Twice May Van Ramsden had come to call on Helen. Once she had brought Ruth and Mercy De Vorne with her. And on each occasion she had demanded that Gregson take their cards to Helen.
Gregson had taken the cards up one flight and then had sent on the cards by Maggie to Helen’s room. Gregson said below stairs that he would “give notice” if he were obliged to take cards to anybody who roomed in the attic.
May and her friends trooped up the stairs in the wake of their cards, however—for so it had been arranged with Helen, who expected them on both occasions.
The anger of the Starkweather family would have been greater had they known that these calls of their own most treasured social acquaintances were really upon the little old lady who had been shut away into the front attic suite, and whose existence even was not known to some of the servants in the Starkweather mansion.
May, as she had promised, was bringing, one or two at a time, her friends who, as children when Cornelius Starkweather was alive, had haunted this old house because they loved old Mary Boyle. And May was proving, too, to the Western girl, that all New York people of wealth were neither heartless or ungrateful. Yet the crime of forgetfulness these young women must plead to.
The visits delighted Mary Boyle. Helen knew that she slept better—after these little excitements of the calls—and did not go pattering up and down the halls with her crutch in the dead of night.