“Thank you, Miss Lovejoy,” Gloria said. “We will let you know the result of our search.”
CHAPTER IV.
A HAUNTED HOUSE
The model tenement which Miss Lovejoy had pointed out to them was soon reached. A door on the ground floor was labeled “Office,” and so Gloria pushed the electric button.
A trim young woman whose long-lashed, dark eyes suggested her nationality, received them, but regretted to have to tell them that every flat in the model tenement was occupied. She looked, with but slightly concealed curiosity, at these three applicants who, as was quite evident, were from other environments.
Gloria glanced about the neat courtyard and up at windows where flowers were blossoming in bright window boxes, then glowingly she turned back to the girl: “It was a splendid thing for those wealthy society women to do, wasn’t it,” she said, “erecting this really handsome yellow brick building in the midst of so much poverty and squalor. It must have a most uplifting effect on the lives of the poor people to be able to live here where everything is so sweet and clean, rather than there,” nodding, as she spoke, at a building across the street which looked gloomy, crumbling, unsafe and unsanitary.
The office attendant spoke with enthusiasm. “No one knows better than I, for I used to live in the other kind of tenement when I was a child, but Miss Lovejoy’s club for factory girls gave me my chance to learn bookkeeping, and now I am agent here. My name is Miss Selenski. Would you like to see the model apartment?”
“Thank you. Indeed we would,” Gloria replied with enthusiasm; then she added, “Miss Selenski, I am Miss Vandergrift, and these are my sisters, Roberta and Lena May. We hope to be your neighbors soon.”
If there was a natural curiosity in the heart of the dark-eyed girl, she said nothing of it, and at once led the way through the neatly tiled halls and soon opened a door admitting them to a small flat of three rooms, which was clean and attractively furnished. The windows, flooded with sunlight, overlooked the East River.
“This is the apartment that we show,” Miss Selenski explained. “The others are just like it, or were, before tenants moved in,” she corrected.
“Say, this is sure cosy! Who lives in this one?” Bobs inquired.