"How do you mean?"
"I'll take her home with me. We've got rooms and rooms in that barracks of ours. The whole third floor. She can stay for awhile. Anyway, she can't go back to that house."
The girl sat looking from one to the other, uncomprehending. Her hands were clutching each other tightly. Emma Barton turned to her. "What do you say, Jennie? Would you like to go home with Miss Payson here? Just for awhile, until we think of something else? I think we can manage the business college course."
The girl seemed hardly to comprehend. Lottie leaned toward her. "Would you like to come to my house, Jeannette?" And at that the first stab of misgiving darted through Lottie. "My house?" She thought of her mother.
"Yes," answered Jennie with the ready acquiescence of her class. "Yes."
And so it was settled, simply. Ma Kromek accepted the decision with dumb passiveness. One of the brothers would bring Jennie's clothes to the Prairie Avenue house. Jennie had only spent half of the stolen hundred. The unspent half she had returned to him. The rest she would pay back, bit by bit, out of her earnings. Winnie Steppler bemoaned her inability to make a feature story of Jennie—Jeannette. Lottie smiled at Jennie, and propelled her down the corridor and into the elevator, to the street. In her well-fitting tailor suit, and her good furs and her close little velvet hat, she looked the Lady Bountiful. The girl, shabby, tear-stained, followed. Lottie was racked with horrid misgivings. Why had she suggested it! What a mad idea! Her mother! She tried to put the thought out of her mind. She couldn't face it. And all the while she was unlocking the door of the electric, settling herself in the seat, holding out a hand to help Jennie's entrance. The watery sunshine of the early morning had been a false promise. It was raining again.
Out of the welter of State Street and Wabash, and into the clear stretch of Michigan once more she turned suddenly to look at Jennie and found Jennie looking fixedly at her. Jennie's eyes did not drop shiftily at this unexpected encounter. That was reassuring.
"Gussie works at my sister's," she told the girl, bluntly. "That's how I happened to be in court this morning when your case came up."
"Oh," said Jennie, accepting this as of a piece with all the rest of the day's happenings. Then, after a moment, "Is that why you said you'd take me? Gussie?"
"No, I didn't even think of Gussie at the time. I just thought of you. I didn't even think of myself." She smiled a little grimly. "I'm going to call you Jeannette, shall I?"