Quite unconsciously, and certainly without intention, the three High School girls held themselves a little apart from Lena and her “crowd,” and Lena was quite sharp enough to detect and resent this. She chuckled as she watched Frances’ clouded face.
“O never mind, Frances,” Elsie Harding whispered under cover of a brisk discussion on old ladies, that Lena’s words had started, “Lena’s just talking for effect. She won’t take the trouble to go to the Home.”
XII
NANCY REXTREW
But that was where Elsie was mistaken. Lena did go the very next afternoon, and dragged the reluctant Eva with her. The girls, proposing to join the Sunday promenade on the Avenue later, were in their Sunday best when they presented themselves at the big, old-fashioned frame house on Capitol Hill.
“Who you goin’ to ask for?” Eva questioned as Lena, lifting the old brass knocker, dropped it sharply.
“The Barlow angel, I s’pose. We don’t know the name of anybody else here,” Lena returned with a grin.
The maid who answered their summons told them to go right upstairs. They would find Mrs. Barlow in Room 10 on the second floor. So they went up, Lena’s eyes, as always, keen and alert, Eva scowling, and wishing herself “out of it.”