“There, I must stop.
“Lovingly,
“MARY S. WINSHIP,
“District Nurse.”
The letter of the District Nurse reawakened all Gloria's interest in the street she had “discovered.” She thought about it a great deal while she and Aunt Em were driven about sightseeing. Her preoccupation was a source of gentle worriment to Aunt Em, and would have been even more so had that dear person suspected Gloria's designs against Un-Pleasant Street. These designs were unbosomed in a second letter to the District Nurse.
CHAPTER IV.
Gloria's second letter to the District Nurse ran thus:
“Dear Miss Winship: I keep thinking of those dreadful houses. Every time I look in a daily paper I expect to read that one of them has tumbled down, and I'm afraid it will be Dinney's house, where that poor, sick woman is—or Straps' house! They ought to tumble down, every one of them, but not till they are emptied of their poor loads of humanity. If they are half as bad inside as they are outside! I keep and keep thinking of them. Think of a girl named Rose being in a house like that, and another girl with Rose for her middle name in a beautiful, great hotel here, or Uncle Em's lovely house at home—both of them Roses. It isn't fair!
“Do you know, I have a plan, but I'm 'most afraid to divulge it—I wouldn't to Uncle Em for the world, yet! He'd laugh the roof off. He says women have no heads for business, and as for girls!—But if not heads, I suppose they might have hearts, and the hearts might ache, the way mine does every time I think of those houses and Straps and Dinney and Hunkie—and the girl with eyes like mine. Yes, I'll tell you. I mean to tear down some of those houses—Dinney's, at any rate. Now, go outdoors and laugh!
“I don't suppose you know it, but Uncle Em's keeping a lot of money for me when I get of age. I'm seventeen now. I never asked how much money I'll have, but it's a lot, I'm sure of that. What I've been planning out in my mind is to use some of that money in building decent houses for Dinney and Straps, and some of the rest you are working for. I can have the old ones torn down. I asked uncle for a runabout, but I'll give that up. I wish I dared ask him how much it costs to tear a house down—I wonder if you couldn't find out for me?