"That could hardly be," Hazel answered dubiously. "Look at his threadbare clothes, and how unkempt and neglected he appears to be. He surely doesn't look like a boy for whose care $250 is paid every month."
"Don't forget what it was that sent us here," Katherine reminded. "Isn't it just possible that this little boy's fright is proof of the very condition we came here to expose?"
"Yes, it's possible," Hazel replied thoughtfully. "At least, we ought not neglect to find out what this means."
Then turning again to the crouching figure in the bushes, she said:
"What is your name, little boy? Is it Glen?"
At the utterance of this name, the youth shook as with ague.
"Look out, Hazel; he'll have a spasm," Katherine cautioned. "He thinks we are not his friends and are going to do something he doesn't want us to do. Let me talk to him:
"Listen, little boy," she continued, addressing the pitiful crouching figure. "We're not going to hurt you. We'll do just what you want us to do. We'll take you where you want to go. Will that be all right?"
A relaxing of the tense attitude of the boy indicated that he was somewhat reassured by these words. His fists went suddenly to his eyes and he began to sob hysterically. Hazel moved toward him with more sympathetic reassurance, when there was an interruption of proceedings from a new source.
A girl about 18 years old stepped up in front of the two Camp Fire Girls and reached forward as if to seize the juvenile refugee with both hands. She was rather ultra-stylishly clad for a negligee, summer-resort community, wearing a pleated taffeta skirt and Georgette crepe waist and a white sailor hat of expensive straw with a bright blue ribbon around the crown. Hazel afterwards remarked that "her face was as cold as an iceberg and the odor of perfume about her was enough to asphyxiate a field of phlox and shooting-stars."