She was an odd little creature, straight and slender, with a mop of jet-black curls, skin dusky as a gypsy’s, and eyes like the bluest sky. Her coarse dress of red cotton stuff reached nearly to her ankles, and a curious beaded bodice of dark green scalloped with gold added a foreign, fantastic touch to her appearance.
“How soon will he sing again?” The question was anxiously put, with a swift backward glance.
Doodles started “Annie Laurie,” and at once the bird took up the tune, the listener in the doorway clasping her tiny hands in delight.
“Here, you kid you! what yer doin’ out there? Didn’t I tell yer to keep where yer b’long!”
A woman, in dingy yellow and black, strode across the hall, and with a jerk of her bony arm the little one was snatched away. Dolly Moon’s door slammed, and Doodles suddenly felt lonesome.
“She might have let her stay and hear Caruso,” he lamented. “Don’t see what hurt she was doing.”
As soon as his brother came home he told him about it.
“That’s the crowd I heard coming in last night,” Blue decided. “Guess you’d gone to sleep. ’T was ten or eleven. I knew ’t must be some new ones. They had a lot of traps, by the clatter. Bet they’ve got Gaylord’s room, too. The door was ajar when I went for some water this morning, and two men were in there.”
“I wish Mr. Gaylord was here now,” sighed Doodles.
“Oh, don’t you worry!” returned his brother. “He’ll be back again. You always have to go with the folks that hire you, and he had to. Mrs. Graham’ll get tired o’ spinnin’ round in an auto soon as it’s cold—by September prob’ly. That’ll be here before you can say,—