“I don’t suppose they even know the meaning of the word,” Bobs replied.
They left the train at the station nearest the Seventy-seventh Street Settlement. Since Gloria was to be employed there, she planned starting from that point to search for the nearest suitable dwelling. They found themselves in a motley crowd composed of foreign women and children, who jostled one another in an evident effort to reach the sidewalk where, in two-wheeled carts, venders of all kinds of things salable were calling their wares. “They must sell everything from fish to calico,” Bobs reported after a moment’s inspection from the curbing.
The women, who wore shawls of many colors over their heads and who carried market baskets and babies, were, some of them, Bohemians and others Hungarian. Few words of English were heard by the interested girls. “I see where I have to acquire a new tongue if I am to know what our future neighbors are talking about,” Bobs had just said, when, suddenly, just ahead of them, a thin, sickly woman slipped and would have fallen had not a laboring man who was passing caught her just in time. The grateful woman coughed, her hand pressed to her throat, before she could thank him. The girls saw that she had potatoes in a basket which seemed too heavy for her. The man was apparently asking where she lived; then he assisted her toward a near tenement.
“Well,” Bobs exclaimed, “there is evidently chivalry among working men as well as among idlers.”
At the crossing they were caught in a jam of traffic and pedestrians. Little Lena May clung to Gloria’s arm, looking about as though terrorized at this new and startling experience. When, after some moments’ delay, the opposite sidewalk was reached in safety, Bobs exclaimed gleefully: “Wasn’t that great?” But Lena May had not enjoyed the experience, and it was quite evident to the other two that it was going to be very hard for their sensitive, frail youngest sister to be transplanted from her gardens, where she had spent long, quiet, happy hours, painting the scenes she loved, to this maelstrom of foreign humanity. There was almost a pang of regret in the heart of the girl who had mothered the others when she realized fully, for the first time, what her own choice of a home location might mean to their youngest. Perhaps she had been selfish, because of her own great interest in Settlement Work, to plan to have them all live on the crowded East Side, but her fears were set at rest a moment later when they came upon a group of children, scarcely more than babies, who were playing in a gutter. Lena May’s sweet face brightened and, smiling up at Gloria, she exclaimed: “Aren’t they dears, in spite of the rags and dirt? I’d love to do something for them.”
“I’d like to put them all in a tub of soap-suds and give them a good scrubbing for once in their lives,” the practical Bobs remarked. Then she caught Gloria by the arm, exclaiming, as she nodded toward a crossing, “There goes that chivalrous laboring man. He steps off with too much agility to be a ditch-digger, or anyone who does hard work, doesn’t he, Glow?”
The oldest sister laughed. “Bobs,” she remarked, “I sometimes think that you are a detective by nature. You are always trying to discover by the cut of a man’s hair what his profession may be.”
Bobs’ hazel eyes were merry, though her face was serious. “You’ve hit it, Glow!” she exclaimed. “I was going to keep it a secret a while longer, but I might as well confess, now that the cat is out of the bag.”
“What cat?” Lena May had only heard half of this sentence; she had been so interested in watching the excitement among the children caused by the approach of an organ grinder.
“My chosen profession is the cat,” Bobs informed her, “and I suppose my brain, where it has been hiding, is the bag. I’m going to be a detective.”