There was a step on the stairs as the girls extinguished their light, then an agonized voice called to them through the key-hole:
“Girls! Girls! Let me in for just one minute, do!”
Marion opened the door quickly, and admitted Miss Allyn.
“Girls, my mother is dead and I’ve got to go home,” said the little reporter, brokenly.
The next moment she was sobbing on Marion’s shoulder.
CHAPTER X.
A DEED OF VALOR.
It was the day following Miss Allyn’s departure to her distant home, and Marion Marlowe was once more making the rounds of the city.
As she stood before the door of a handsome brown-stone residence her brain was teeming with some hitherto almost unknown sensations.
Why was it that some should have so much and others so little? Why should she be so utterly destitute of even the necessaries of life, while others were basking idly in the sunshine of luxury? The memory of that hateful mortgage had not left her day or night, yet as the weeks passed by they left her worse off than ever. She could now hardly afford to buy food for her sister and herself.