“O sir! Will you tell us how to get home? We’re lost!”
He stopped and came toward them, even though Aubrey and Natalie clutched at her frock, whispering: “Don’t! That station-house!”
“Where is your home?”
Without thinking Jessica replied: “Sobrante, California.”
“Whew! Quite a distance, that! However, where are you staying here, in New York?”
Aubrey had regained her courage and drawn near and promptly gave Madame Mearsom’s address.
“Hmm. That’s a long way, too, though not so bad as California. There’s no street car-line will take you, convenient, but—have you any money?”
“Not a cent.”
This was odd. Girls wealthy enough to belong at a fashionable boarding-school, on the street alone at this time of night without any money—things began to look dubious. Besides, and here the astute officer scanned their attire, they were none of them richly dressed. They were very likely runaways from some reformatory, or public institution, and the best place for them, anyway, till their story could be sifted, was the nearest station-house. This was not far distant, and thither they were now escorted, despite their voluble protests.
At least Aubrey and Natalie were voluble, and Jessica listened, growing wise. To be shut up in a station-house meant the worst possible disgrace. It meant, probably, a prison, and though they had sometimes felt that the Adelphi, as the Mearsom establishment was called, was “as bad as a prison” they changed their minds when confronted with the real thing.