Marie-Jeanne’s eyes filled with tears.
“It isn’t only poverty that’s keeping us here. There is something else. I can’t tell you,—but you must promise me, if you can stand the loss of your things, not to send the police here. That is the only thing I ask, because if they came,—the police——” she paused and burst into tears.
“Dear Marie-Jeanne, isn’t there any thing we can do?” they asked, but not another word would the poor girl say. And presently she drew away from the two girls and hailed a belated hansom. They kissed her good-by, but she still refused to speak, and giving the address of Miss Letitia Lake as glibly as if they had known it all their lives, they jumped into the cab and drove away.
As they turned the corner a sign over a little shop caught their eye. It read:
Thomas Dinwiddie,
Dealer In Cast-Off Clothing.
In three-quarters of an hour the hansom paused in front of a fashionable-looking house in a quiet, respectable street, and in another three minutes Nancy and Billie were laughing and weeping in the arms of their friends, while some one in the next room was telephoning to the police station that the two American girls who had been lost were found at last.
CHAPTER VIII.—WESTMINSTER CHAMBERS.
Oh, the joy that cometh in the morning after a night of weeping!
Billie had always prided herself on her optimism, but that night in Miss Felicia Rivers’ lodging house had quenched it for a time. The two girls cried and laughed by turns in telling the story of their sufferings to their friends, who were almost as bedraggled and forlorn as they were themselves. Miss Campbell and her two remaining charges had not touched the bed that terrible night. They had been in active communication with the police department and the American Embassy since eight o’clock the evening before.
“We can afford to laugh now that all’s said and done,” exclaimed Nancy; “but if I had been compelled to wear those rags five minutes longer, I am certain I should have jumped off London Bridge.”