After the lighted hallway the outside world seemed darker than ever, even though the days were yet long and twilight lingered. But to-night the sky was clouded and a storm impending. Already in the west there were flashes of lightning, and though, in ordinary, Mary Jane delighted in an electric storm, just then it made her think the more longingly of home and its security.
“Besides, if I should get my fresh clean dress all wet, that would make work for mother. I’m glad I forgot that hat, though. That’ll have to be dry, anyway, now; and maybe after all, when Bonny-Gay gets well she may want it herself. It was her mother gave it to me, not her. Now which way—I guess this. Oh! I know! I’ll find that gardener, Mr. Weems, and he’s so nice and kind he’ll show me the way to go. Maybe, after all, there is another car goes nearer to Dingy street than that one I took first and—There’s a man. It might be him. I’ll run and see.”
But when she had clicked across the path to where the man stood he had already begun to move away, and she saw that he was not at all like the gardener. So she paused, irresolute, trying to recall by which of the several avenues leading from it she had entered the Place.
There were people hurrying homeward in each direction, and a few smart equipages were whirling past; but nobody paused to glance at her, save with that half-shudder of repugnance to which she was quite accustomed when she met strangers, and that had rarely wounded her feelings as it did just then and there.
“Well, I can’t help that. And I don’t mind it for myself, not now at all, since I know about poor father. He’s the one feels worst for it. And that I shall tell him the very minute I see him. So let them look and turn away, if they wish. Looks don’t hurt, really, and oh! dear! if I only could remember the street I ought to take. Charles, of course. I know that and there it is; but whether to go to that side or this—”
In the midst of her perplexity the electric current was turned on and the Place was suddenly and noiselessly flooded with a light as of day. Courage came back and after another hasty scrutiny of the streets, to discover some landmark that she could recall, she saw the monument and the lion, and ran toward them as if they had been old friends.
“Bonny-Gay loves them, and so does the Gray Gentleman, and they do look as quiet and peaceful as can be. I stopped there, I know, and maybe I’ll think it out better there.”
Yet even in that reposeful place Mary Jane could gain no new ideas as to her course, nor was anybody near to whom she could apply.
The gardener had long since gone home for the night, and in desperation, Mary Jane determined to appeal to the very first person who came by. This proved to be a young man, with a cane and eyeglasses; and he appeared to be extremely busy. The little girl thought he must also be one of the “aristocratics” of whom her father spoke so contemptuously, because when she had asked him to “please tell me the way to Dingy street?” he had scarcely glanced at her but had haughtily replied: “Never heard of such a place.”
“Hmm. Too bad. Father says they don’t any of them know very much, and I’m sorry. Don’t know where Dingy street is, indeed! when I know it myself, even a little girl like me and have lived there always. I mean ever since I was a baby and we left the country. That, mother says, was the mistake we made. In the country father didn’t drink and lose his work. Well, we’ll go again, some day, when I get big and strong, and can help more with the wash. We could earn a lot, mother and me together, if I was big.”