"If you do something bad to do something good, which is it, good or bad?"
One by one the minutes passed. It grew darker and colder. At times Genevieve walked on aimlessly. At others, she stood one side, watching the crowds, hoping to find some man or woman whom she could dare to ask for money. But her cheeks burned at the thought, and she never saw the man or woman whom she wanted to ask—for money. That the blue-coated man at the street-crossing might help her, never occurred to Genevieve. Genevieve knew policemen only as vaguely dreadful creatures connected with jails and arrests.
In time it came to be quite dark. Genevieve wondered what would become of her—by midnight. People did not starve or die, she supposed, in Boston streets—not when the streets were as bright as these. But she must get to Sunbridge. Sunbridge! How worried they must be about her now in Sunbridge, and how she wished she were there! She would be glad to see even Miss Jane's severest frown—if she could see Miss Jane, too!
It was six o'clock when Genevieve suddenly remembered Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Butterfield. She wondered then how it was possible that she had forgotten them so long.
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Butterfield were two friends of Mrs. Kennedy's not very far from sixty years old. They lived in a quaint old house on Mt. Vernon Street, on top of Beacon Hill—Genevieve thought she remembered the number. She remembered the house very well, for she had called there twice with Mrs. Kennedy the winter before.
It was with a glad little cry that Genevieve now turned to the first woman she met and asked the way to Mt. Vernon Street.
In the somber Butterfield dining-room on Mt. Vernon Street, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Butterfield had almost finished dinner, when their pompous, plainly scandalized butler, standing beneath the severest of the severe Butterfield portraits, announced stiffly:
"There's a young person at the door, ma'am, with a bag. She says she knows you, if you'll see her, please."
One minute later, the astonished Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Butterfield caught in their arms a white-faced, almost fainting girl, who had sobbed out: