"Perhaps, it would be better. I have been concerned about them. They have been most thoughtful and considerate so far. You may take the Fraulein with you—and the school purse, too, Miss Burkham. You may be able to buy something for them."
"While you are gone, I'll try to get into communication with our people at Flemington. The telephone and telegraphs are useless. Marshall and Herman might be able to walk out and carry something back. It will be hours before a delivery wagon can get through to bring us anything."
Following Miss Burkham's instructions, the girls dressed in their shortest and shabbiest skirts and put on heavy shoes. It was a dismal, hungry-looking party which set forth.
For a square down Main Street, the way was clear. They were often forced to leave the sidewalk and make a detour to escape the piles of drift which lay in heaps. The mud was over the tops of the rubber shoes, and the greater number had discarded overshoes before they had gone far. At the corner of Main and Clinton Avenue, they stopped. Their way was cut off by a great pile of logs, timbers, and uprooted trees which reached above the second story of the houses. Here and there, caught between the branches of the trees or the conjunction of timbers, were bits of household articles, parts of chairs, window frames or broken beds and soggy mattresses.
"We can climb over," suggested Hester. "That will not be much of a climb."
Miss Burkham had been hesitating. She feared to go on and yet to go back meant dissatisfied, hungry girls shut up in a wet, foul-smelling building.
"We'll climb," she said. "But be careful to move slowly, and not bring this down upon you."
The feat was not a difficult one. They succeeded in crossing and entered the business street. There was not a whole plate-glass window in this section. They had been shattered into bits so small that no trace of them could be found.
The girls entered what had been the largest and finest grocery store of the city. The mud was several feet deep; the show-cases had been battered to pieces; canned goods were piled in heaps in the corners and covered with refuse. But the combination most surprising, was where a large cheese had tumbled down upon a dead cow which had been washed in from some dairy farm far up the river.
Men were already clearing the streets, and shoveling the refuse from the stores.