Before Glory could assure the anxious mother that she would do her utmost for their safety, Mary had run down the rude stairs, shaking the shed-like building as she ran, and was within the red cottage ere the visitor realized it.
Glory exclaimed, as she gazed about, “Here we are, at last, in a regular house! And my, isn’t it big? Why, ever an’ ever so much bigger than the ‘littlest house in Ne’ York!’ That bed’s wide enough for all Meg’s children to onct, and–my, how Bonny Angel does sleep. I’m sleepy, too, now I see such a prime place. The woman told me to sleep and I guess I’d better mind.”
So, presently, having removed Bonny’s draggled coat from the still drowsy child, Glory placed her charge at the extreme back of the bed and lay down herself.
“Wake up, sissy! Come down an’ get your basin of soup. Enough in it for the pair of ye, with strawberry shortcake to match!”
It was this summons which aroused Glory from a delightful slumber and she sprang to her feet, not comprehending, at first, what she heard or where she was. Then she returned, laughing as she spoke, “’Course I’ll come, you splendid Mary Fogarty! And I’m more obliged ’an I can say, but I’ll work it out, I truly will try to work it out, if you’ll hunt up your jobs. That dear Timothy said you needed mendin’, dreadful!”
But she was unaware that this same Timothy was also close at hand.
“Oh! he did, did he? Well, he said the true word for once, but bad manners in him all the same,” answered Mrs. Fogarty; and, as Glory joined them at the foot of the stairs, there were the two engaged in a sort of scuffle which had more mirth than malice in it.
When Take-a-Stitch appeared, they regarded her with a look of compassion which she did not understand; because at the dinner, now comfortably over, the child and her hopeless search had been discussed and the ten boarders, the seven children, with their parents, had all reached one and the same conclusion, namely, that the only safe place for such innocent and ignorant vagrants was in some “Asylum.” Who was to announce this decision and convey the little ones to their place of refuge had not, as yet, been settled. Nobody was inclined to take up that piece of work and the ten boarders sauntered back to their more congenial labor on the railroad, leaving the matter in Mary Fogarty’s hands.
However, it was a matter destined for nobody to settle, because when Glory had carefully conveyed the basin of soup, the pitcher of milk and the generous slices of shortcake back to the loft, she was frightened out of all hunger by the appearance of Bonny Angel. It was almost the first time in her life that the little “Queen of Elbow Lane” had had a dinner set before her of such proper quantity and quality, yet she was not to taste it.
Bonny was tossing to and fro, sometimes moaning with pain, sometimes shrieking in terror, but always in such a state as to banish every thought save of herself from Glory’s mind. And then began a week of the greatest anxiety and distress which even the little caretaker of Elbow Lane, with her self-imposed charge of its many children, had ever known.