“I don’t much wonder that you ask,” Bobs laughingly exclaimed, as she thrust her fingers in her ears, for at that moment a tug on the river, not a stone’s throw away from them, rent the air with a shrill blast of its whistle, which was repeated time and again.
“You won’t mind the noises when you get used to them,” Miss Selenski told them cheerfully. “I lived on Seventy-sixth Street, right under the Third Avenue L, and the only time I woke up was when the trains stopped running. The sudden stillness startles one, I suppose.”
Lena May said nothing, but she was remembering what Bobs had said when they had left the Third Avenue Elevated: “Now we are to see how the ‘other half’ lives.”
“Poor other half!” the young girl thought. “I ought to be willing to live here for a time and bring a little of the brightness I have known into their lives, for they must be very drab.”
“Just wait here a minute,” Miss Selenski was saying, “and I’ll run over to the grocery and get the key.”
She was back in an incredibly short time and found the three girls examining with great interest the heavy front door, which had wide panels, a shapely fan light over them, with beautiful emerald glass panes on each side.
“I simply adore this knocker,” Bobs declared, jubilantly. “Hark, let’s hear the echoes.”
The knocker was lifted and dropped again, but though they all listened intently, a sudden confusion on the river made it impossible to hear aught else.
“My private opinion is that Marilyn’s ghost would much prefer some other spot for midnight prowls,” Bobs remarked, as the old key was being fitted into the queerly designed lock. “Imagine a beautiful, sensitive girl of seventy-five years ago trying to prowl down there where barges are tied to soot-black docks and where derricks are emptying coal into waiting trucks. No really romantic ghost, such as I am sure Marilyn Pensinger must be, would care to prowl around here.”
Miss Selenski smiled at Bobs’ nonsense. “I’m glad you feel that way,” she said, “for, of course, if you don’t believe in the ghost, you won’t mind renting the house.”