“Where are you going? Why are you here? Where is your mother? Oh, you are, are you? To the Maggie Lou! Why do I call it that? It’s a pet name for an excellent institution given by its intimate admirers. The George Hennens—you——”
Questioning, answering, tossing information back and forth as a Japanese juggler might balls, he somehow managed at the same time to deposit me and my bag in a cab. I breathed a sigh of relief to think that it was the driver’s problem and not mine safely to cross the noisy flood in front of the station.
Sometimes since then I have marveled at the chance which caused me, just down from Maine, to collide with Bob Mathews, just in from New Rochelle. But I have learned that it is a miracle of frequent occurrence that newcomers to Babylon should run upon acquaintances. It is only the old residents who go abroad day after day and see no familiar face.
Should I have gone back to Agonquitt in despair of Forty-second Street if I had not met Bob? I suppose not. But how meeting him simplified the problem of reaching the Margaret Louisa!
“I’ve a dinner engagement with a fellow at the club to-night, or I should carry you off to dine with me,” said Bob, as the cab drew up in front of the brownstone building between the home-rushing roar of Broadway and the early evening glitter of Fifth Avenue. “But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: I’ll cut away early and see you before bedtime. I know some girls who keep bachelor’s hall in a Harlem flat, but they used to live in boarding houses, and I’ll telephone them for a list of addresses and bring it around to you.”
The door of the evangelical shelter swung open before me. I am not a timid person, but a chill crept up my backbone. There was something depressing in the air of prim rectitude that pervaded the hall. But Bob was gone, and my bag—by the way, it had looked old-fashioned and shabby beside his in the cab—stood within the portals.
I don’t know why I should have expected the woman at the desk to beam upon me, or to have a brass band ready with a pæan announcing that Ellen Berwick had come to town to conquer fortune. But her politeness was so impersonal, her civility so thinly cloaked her ennui, that I had difficulty in controlling the quiver of my lips. How friendly and dear the Agonquitt station suddenly seemed, with the neighbors clustered on the platform with their little last gifts!
“Oh, yes,” said the lady at the desk—“Berwick. Your pastor and Mrs. Hennen recommended you.” I felt that I was being weighed for a housemaid’s position, and the blood tingled behind my ears, but she went on indifferently: “Your trunk must be sent to the trunk room within twenty-four hours.”
“It—it can’t have reached here yet,” I murmured.
“Within twenty-four hours from the time when it does come.” I felt that I had been guilty of levity.