As the young people were about to leave the convent, the young nun who had admitted them appeared and said, “Sister Theresa invites you to lunch. It is long after the noon hour.”
She turned, not waiting for a possible refusal and so they followed her through a side door, along a narrow corridor which ended in descending steps. They found themselves in a bare basement room. There were plain wooden tables, clean and white, with benches on both sides. No one was in evidence as the noon meal had been cleared away. The young nun motioned them to a table, then glided away to the kitchen. She soon returned with four bowls of simple vegetable soup, glasses of milk and a plain coarse brown bread without butter.
“I hadn’t realized how starved I am!” Dora said when they were alone.
“Isn’t it too story-bookish for anything, our finding Little Bodil at last?” Mary exclaimed as she ate with a relish the appetizing soup.
“Righto. It sure is,” Jerry agreed.
Dick asked, “Do you think Etta Dooley will be too proud to take the money?”
“I don’t,” Mary said with conviction. “She won’t suspect that we had wanted to find some way of giving her the money. She’ll think that our first thought had been to recommend a good home for Jackie. That will make it all right with her, I’m sure.”
Dora glanced at Jerry somewhat anxiously. “They can stay where they are, can’t they? Etta said that if it weren’t for her feeling of being dependent on charity, she would simply love being there.”
Jerry nodded thoughtfully. “I’m sure Dad will be glad to have them. I reckon he hasn’t any other plans for that cabin. We could lease them, say three acres, and if they paid a little rent that would make Etta feel independent.”
Dora added her thought, “If Etta passes those examinations she’s going to take in Douglas, maybe she could be teacher in that little school near your ranch, Jerry.”