Nurse Hummel led the way, and Janet followed, somewhat reassured, but still with the lurking sense of disappointment. The capable woman gave the check for Janet’s battered little trunk to a transfer express, and put the child into a cab, drawn by the most frisky, high-headed horse at the New York side of the ferry. Then she got in herself, not without audible maledictions on joints that were less limber than in her youth.
When the interesting, but confusing, drive ended in the frisky horse being pulled up so short before the Graham’s door that he almost sat down on his pathetic, docked tail, Janet looked up and down the house which was to be her home for many months. She saw a high, brownstone structure, differing not at all, apparently, from a long line of such edifices stretching westward from Fifth Avenue as far as she could see, and eastward again across it. Not a sign of life could she espy; not a curtain moved; not a face smiled at her; not a hand waved, still less was there the shouting, gesticulating bevy of cousins on the front steps which she had hoped to see.
But she was not arriving unnoted. Behind the curtains on the second floor five eager faces peered out to catch the first glimpse of her. The Graham children saw a short girl, not quite as tall as Gladys, with soft, rounding curves throughout her body; a face that was decidedly pretty, but very pathetic; with big, wistful brown eyes, looking as if they might quickly be hidden by tears; brown hair, curling around a broad, white forehead; a skin with a hint of brown beneath its whiteness, and full, red lips meeting in soft curves, fashioned, unmistakably, for smiling, but now drooping at the corners in an attempt to keep them from quivering. They saw also a brown skirt and jacket, with reddish tints occasionally, showing wear, and revealing, to more experienced eyes, the fact that they had originally been made up with the other side of the goods out. A hopelessly unstylish hat surmounted the beautiful masses of red-brown hair, and woolen gloves completed a costume that made Gladys groan aloud at its confirmation of her worst fears. But Gwen, truly artistic, and with truer standards of judgment than her sister’s, unguided though they were, saw the facts which the shabbiness of her new cousin’s garments could not conceal from her more observant eyes.
“She’s awfully pretty, Gladys,” she said. “And she looks like a lady, and she looks sweet, and—and—oh, I don’t know—trusty, like a dog. And, dear me, she is really awfully pretty; ever so much prettier than either of us.”
Gladys gave a derisive sniff. “Pretty! Well, so she might be, if she looked decent, but, for goodness’ sake, what clothes! Why, our laundress’s girl looks better! Fancy taking such a guy to school! I shall die of mortiffication.”
Gwen actually laughed. “Mortif-fication, Gladys? Maybe bad pronunciation is as bad as old clothes, if you stop to think about it. And Mary Ellen Flynn does wear citified things, and frizzes and cheap lace, and so on, but I don’t know that I think she looks better than that girl down there. At any rate, I suppose there are other clothes in New York, and if it would save your life, we might make her look decent.”
“I think she looks as though she could fish and sail a boat, too,” said Jack, who, while his sisters were frivolously discussing mere externals, had been silently considering the new cousin from the more important viewpoint of her possible inheritance of her mother’s talents.
In the meantime, Norah, the waitress, had admitted Nurse Hummel and her charge, and poor Janet was heavy-heartedly climbing the long flight of stairs, without a voice to hail her coming. “We always meet people at home, Mrs. Hummel,” she said at last, in a trembling voice, as she paused at the landing to turn back to her guide, following with shortened breath. “Aren’t they glad to see me?”
“What nonsense; just nonsense!” declared Nurse Hummel, with the increase of accent always perceptible when she was moved. “There iss different customs, that’s all. Ve iss not der same as you in der Vest. My younk ladies iss vaiting you in der library, alretty. Yet it vouldn’t haf hurt if someone came out mit greetings vonce,” she added to herself, half minded to be indignant for the coldness shown the little stranger, whose sweet and charming ways had immediately won her affection.
As Nurse Hummel’s solid tread, passing Janet’s light one in the hall, fell on the ears of the group in the window, all but Jack and Viva stepped hastily forward, anxious not to appear to have been indulging in surreptitious curiosity.