A wan smile was the only answer. Miss Nell Wiggin was not wasting time. She led the way to the cloakroom, donned her outdoor garments, and then, taking her new friend by the hand, she said: “Hold fast to me. We’ll take a short cut through the back stockroom. It’s black as soot in there when it isn’t lit up. Mr. Queerwitz won’t let us burn lights except for business reasons.”
Bobs found herself being led through a room so dark that she could barely see the two walls of boxes that were piled high on either side, with a narrow path between.
They soon emerged upon a back alley, where huge cans of refuse stood, and where trucks were continually passing up and down or standing at the back entrances of stores loading and unloading.
“Now walk as fast as you can,” little Miss Wiggin said, as away she went toward Fourth Avenue, with Roberta close behind her. If Bobs had known what was going to happen that noon, she would not have left the shop.
CHAPTER IX.
A HURRIED LUNCH
Fourth Avenue having been reached, Miss Wiggin darted into a corner delicatessen store. “What will you have for your lunch?” she turned to ask of her companion. “I’m going to get five cents’ worth of hot macaroni and a dill pickle.”
“Double the order,” Bobs said, and then she added to the man who stood behind the counter: “I’ll also take two ham sandwiches and two chocolate eclairs.”
“Oh, Miss Dolittle, isn’t that too much for you to spend at noon?” This anxiously from pale, starved-looking little Miss Wiggin.
At the Vandergrift table there had always been many courses with a butler to serve, and in her heedless, thoughtless way, Bobs had supposed that everyone, everywhere, had enough to eat.
It was a queer little smile that she turned toward her new friend as she replied: “This being our first lunch together, let’s have a spread.” Then she paid the entire bill, which came to forty cents. “No,” she assured the protesting Nell Wiggin, “I won’t offer to treat every day. After this we’ll go Dutch, honest we will! Now lead the way.”