She reached the plaza, and crossing it, entered the park. The trees were just coloring prettily. There were morning sounds from the not-far-distant zoo. A few early nursemaids and their charges asleep in baby carriages, were abroad. Several old gentlemen read their morning papers upon the benches, or fed the squirrels who were skirmishing for their breakfasts.
Several plainly-dressed people were evidently taking their own “constitutionals” through the park paths. Swinging down from the north come square-shouldered, cleanly-shaven young men of the same type as Dud Stone. Helen believed that Dud must be a typical New Yorker.
But there were no girls abroad—at least, girls like herself who had leisure. And Helen was timid about making friends with the nursemaids.
In fact, there wasn’t a soul who smiled upon her as she walked through the paths. She would not have dared approach any person she met for any purpose whatsoever.
“They haven’t a grain of interest in me,” thought Helen. “Many of them, I suppose, don’t even see me. Goodness, what a lot of self-centred people there must be in New York!”
She wandered on and on. She had no watch—never had owned one. As she had told Dud Stone, the stars at night were her clock, and by day she judged the hour by the sun.
The sun was behind a haze now; but she had another sure timekeeper. There was nothing the matter with Helen’s appetite.
“I’ll go back and join the family at breakfast,” the girl thought. “I hope they’ll be nice to me. And poor Aunt Eunice dead without our ever being told of it! Strange!”
She had come a good way. Indeed, she was some time in finding an outlet from the park. The sun was behind the morning haze as yet, but she turned east, and finally came out upon the avenue some distance above the gateway by which she had entered.
A southbound auto-bus caught her eye and she signaled it. She not only had brought her purse with her, but the wallet with her money was stuffed inside her blouse and made an uncomfortable lump there at her waist. But she hid this with her arm, feeling that she must be on the watch for some sharper all the time.