When she did finally reach the other girls, who were still talking to the concierge, she had still to fight an uncomfortable impression. Undoubtedly the concierge was a strange and unpleasant looking old woman. She was tall, with a dark, thin face, heavy eyebrows which were turning gray like her hair, and eyes with a peculiar searching expression.
Apparently she was pleased to see Marguerite Arnot again, as Marguerite had lived in her house until Miss Patricia Lord had insisted that she come to live with her at Versailles.
The next moment Bettina was the last of the small procession of four girls to mount the tenement stairs.
The stairs were dark and windowless, but Marguerite Arnot led the way without faltering. Finally she knocked at a door on the third floor.
The next instant the door being opened, the Camp Fire girls and Marguerite entered a large, bare room. Inside the room, and evidently expecting their arrival, were six young French girls, most of them younger than the American girls.
They were all dressed in black so that the effect upon first meeting them was depressing. But Marguerite had previously explained that the girls had been made orphans by the war.
They were living together in a single apartment in order to make a home for themselves with the least possible expense.
Two of them were sisters, the others were not relatives, but acquaintances and friends whom a common need had brought together.
Only a few months before, Marguerite Arnot had first made their acquaintance. At the time she had occupied a small room alone just across the hall and, as she was both ill and lonely, the entire number of girls had been wonderfully kind to her. It was therefore natural that Marguerite should at once think of these girls as forming the nucleus for one of the first Camp Fire units in Paris.
The room had evidently been hastily gotten ready for the visitors. Nearly all the shabby furniture, except a few chairs, had been pushed back into dark corners.