But she could and did follow other of his advices. She turned off the broad white way, proved to be so narrow and so dark; walked briskly eastward.
Perhaps it was the warning of the young Celt, whose girl-baby’s eyes had “something the look” of her own, that awoke in Dolores the desire to get back among the sort of people with whom she had lived. Soon she left the cross street and turned north along one of the small-numbered avenues.
Somehow she had ceased to feel the strangeness of her position; scarcely seemed thinking at all, except for a vague worry over why she was not worrying. A quite unreasonable sense that she would happen upon some recognizable sign-post to her immediate future possessed her. She became cheerful, as though some one she trusted had made her a promise of help.
Over the door of a substantial building of corner-lot dignity, she stopped to read this placard:
RESCUE HOME
CHURCH OF ALL MANKIND
Of neither church nor home had she ever heard, but surely she needed rescue as urgently as could any of mankind. She climbed the stone steps; rang the bell.
The door was opened by a negro boy. At her hesitant question he ushered her into a business-like office. A plain-faced girl, who looked to be about Dolores’ own age, sat behind a typewriter, busy with a stick of chewing gum and a newspaper. Through an inner door appeared a woman who introduced herself as the matron of the home.
Dolores ended her story with the death of her father and her consequent need of a place to stay until she could find employment. She did not notice that the stenographer had left them until that industriously-chewing young person beckoned to the matron from the private office.
“Just wait a few minutes,” said the older woman as she rose. “I have an idea we can help you.”
Only the buzz of their low-voiced conversation carried through the half-closed door. When the matron returned she carried in her hand a copy of the same newspaper over which the too-fat god of the restaurant had not dared risk his dignity. She peered over her glasses at the applicant, then through them at the last-page illustration.