“Oh, yes, certainly! I should be so glad to go!” replied Miette, showing too plainly her eagerness to get away from the place.
“Can you call the woman you spoke of?” Dorothy said to the officer. “I must go to the station, and do not think I should leave my friend here all alone.”
“All alone? Don’t I count,” and he grinned in a silly fashion. “Oh, I see—of course. Young ladies like you must have a—what do you call it? A ‘chapperton?’”
Dorothy was too annoyed to laugh at the man’s queer attempt to use a big word.
“I have always heard that there should be a matron in every public place where young girls or women are detained,” she said with a brave and satisfactory effort.
This quite awed the officer. “I’ll call Mary,” he said getting up from the seat by the door. “She’ll kick about leavin’ off her housework, but I suppose when we’ve got swells to deal with—why we must be swell, too.”
He dragged himself to the stone steps outside and called into a basement next door. But “Mary” evidently did not hear him. Urania had her eyes fixed on that door like an eagle watching a chance to spring. The man stepped off the stoop, but kept his hand on the rail.
“Mary!” he called again, and as he did so Urania shot out of the door, past the officer, and down the street before he, or any one else, had time to realize what she was doing.
Dorothy stood like one transfixed!
The officer first attempted to run—then he yelled and shouted—but of course Urania was putting plenty of ground between herself and the officer’s voice. Dorothy and Miette had hurried out to the side walk.