Still she stood at the window. Her face was rather proud and defiant. And then after a time it became, suddenly, quite blank.
There was Victor coming up the stone steps into the yard, and he was leading a waif by the hand. Only the word “waif” did not occur to Mrs. Baron.
“Well!” she exclaimed, her body rigid, her eyes staring out from beneath pugnacious brows. “Victor and an impossible little female!”
CHAPTER III
MRS. BARON DECIDES
As Baron felt for his key he stood an instant and surveyed the other side of the street, up and down the block. A frown gathered on his forehead.
Bonnie May, keyed to a very high pitch, noted that frowning survey of the line of buildings across the way. “Something wrong?” she asked.
“No, certainly not,” responded Baron; but to himself he was admitting that there was something very wrong indeed. It was the neighborhood. This was his conclusion, just as it had been Flora’s.
He had become conscious of the frowning, grimy fronts; the windows which were like eyes turning baleful glances upon the thoroughfare. The grass-plots, the flower-beds, the suitable carpets spread for the feet of spring—what had become of them?
A dissolute-appearing old woman was scrubbing the ancient stone steps in one place across the way. She suggested better days just as obviously as did the stones, worn away by generations of feet. And a little farther along there were glaring plate-glass fronts bearing gilt legends which fairly shrieked those commercial words—which ought to have been whispered from side doors, Baron thought—Shoes, and Cloaks, and Hats.
What sort of a vicinity was this in which to have a home?