XVI
A few days later, dressed in light mourning, Shirley Bloodgood for the second time in her life wended her way to a certain tenement house not far from the East River.
"Surely I cannot be mistaken,—this must be the place," she told herself, groaning in spirit.
In reply to her timid knock and inquiry for Mrs. Challoner, a little girl directed her to the apartment above, the door of which was presently opened by a woman with full rounded face; and entering a neat, well-furnished, five-room flat, Shirley was soon seated at the window chatting with happy eagerness.
The young woman with the full, fresh, rounded face, it can readily be imagined, was Miriam Challoner.
"You've been away more than three years, Shirley," she sighed, as she bent over a bit of fancy work. "It seems a century almost."
"It hasn't seemed so long to me," returned Shirley. "Though when we first went west, I thought it would be nothing short of a nightmare—waiting for an old man to die."
"It must have been," assented Miriam.
Shirley held up her head proudly, and answered:—"No, it wasn't, because for the first time in my life I really came to know my father. I thought I had known him long before, but I made a mistake. I never knew him until these last three years in Arizona—I found out almost too late."