“Why I, rather than any other girl?”
“I don’t know why I feel so sure that you might succeed, but I do feel so, Olga. She may be in great trouble. If you could find out what it is, I might be able to help her. Will you try, Olga?”
The girl shook her head. “I can’t promise, Miss Laura. I’ll think about it,” was all she would concede.
“She works in Silverstein’s,” Laura added, “and I think she has no relatives in the city.”
The talk drifted then to other matters, and when Olga glanced at the clock, Miss Laura touched a bell, and in a few minutes a maid brought up a cup of hot clam bouillon. “You must take it, Olga, before you go out again in this storm,” Laura said, and reluctantly the girl obeyed.
When she went away, Laura went to the door with her. The car stood there, and before she fairly realised that it was waiting for her Olga was inside, and the chauffeur was tucking the fur rug around her. As, leaning back against the cushions, shielded from wet and cold, she was borne swiftly through the storm, something hard and cold and bitter in the girl’s heart was suddenly swept away in a strong tide of feeling quite new to her, and strangely mingled of sweet and bitter. It was Miss Laura she was thinking of—Miss Laura who had furnished the beautiful Camp Fire room for the girls and made them all so warmly welcome there—who so plainly carried them all in her heart and made their joys and sorrows, their cares and troubles, her own—as she was making Lizette Stone’s now. How good she had been to Elizabeth, how patient and gentle with that provoking Sadie, and with careless slangy Lena Barton and Eva! And to her—Olga thought of the dry stockings and slippers, the hot broth, and now—the car ordered out on such a night just for her. The girl’s throat swelled, her eyes burned, and the last vestige of bitterness was washed out of her heart in a rain of hot tears.
“If she can do so much for all of us I can’t be mean enough to shirk any longer. I’ll see Lizette to-morrow,” she vowed, as the car stopped at her door. She stood for a moment on the steps looking after it before she went in. It had been only “common humanity” to send the girl home in the car on that stormy night, so Miss Laura would have said. She did not guess what it would mean to Olga and through her to other girls—many others—before all was done.
Silverstein’s was a large department store on Seventh Street. Lizette Stone, listlessly putting away goods the next day, stopped in surprise at sight of Olga Priest coming towards her.
“Almost closing time, isn’t it?” Olga said, and added, as Lizette nodded silently, “I want to speak to you—I’ll wait outside.”
In five minutes Lizette joined her. “Do you walk home?” Olga asked.