“Have you thought what you will do to earn money?” Lena May asked Gloria.
“Yes. Miss Lovejoy of the East Seventy-seventh Street Settlement has asked me to take charge of the girls’ clubs and I have accepted.”
“Gloria Vandergrift; you, a daughter of one of the very oldest families in this country, to work, actually work in those dreadful smelling slums.”
Gloria looked almost with pity at the speaker, who, of course, was Gwendolyn, as she said: “Do you realize that being born an aristocrat is merely an accident? You might have been born in the slums, Gwen, and if you had been, wouldn’t you be glad to have someone come to you and give you a chance?”
There being no reply, Gloria continued: “I take no credit to myself because I happened to be born in luxury and not in poverty, but we’ll have to postpone this conversation, for our neighbors are evidently coming to call.”
Bobs sprang to her feet and leaped to the open window. “Hello there, Phyl and Dick! Come around this way and I’ll open the porch door.”
Gwendolyn shrugged her shoulders. “Why doesn’t Roberta allow Peter to admit our visitors,” she began, but Gloria interrupted: “One excellent reason, perhaps, is that all our servants except the cook left this morning. You, of course, were still asleep and did not know of the exodus.”
The sharp retort on the tongue of Gwendolyn was not uttered, for Phyllis De Laney and her big, good-looking brother, Richard, were entering the library.
“You poor dear girls! Just as soon as I heard the news I came right over,” Phyllis De Laney exclaimed as she sank down in a deep, comfortable chair and looked about at her friends with an expression of frank curiosity on her doll-pretty face. “However, I told Ma Mere that I knew there wasn’t a word of truth in the scandalous gossip, and so I came to hear how it all started that I may be able to contradict it.” Phyllis took a breath and then continued her chatter: “Your maid, Gwen, told my Fanchon, and she said that every servant in your employ had been dismissed with two weeks’ advance pay; and she said a good deal more than that too, which, of course, isn’t true. Just listen to this and then tell me if it isn’t simply scandalous. That maid declared that you girls are going to work, actually work, to earn your own living.”
“I’ll say it’s true!” Roberta put in, grinning with wicked glee. Her good pal, Dick, smiled over at her as he remarked with evident amusement: “You don’t look very miserable about it, Bobs. In fact, quite the contrary, you appear pleased. If the truth were known, I envy you, honestly I do! I’d much rather go to work than go to college. I’m no good at Latin or Greek. If languages are dead, bury them, I say. I’m not a student by nature, so what’s the use pretending; but the pater won’t hear to it. Just because our grandfather left us each a million, we’ve got to dwaddle away our lives spending it. Of course I’m nineteen now, but you wait until I’m twenty-one years old and see what will happen.”
His sister Phyllis lifted her eyebrows ever so slightly and looked her disapproval. “In that time you will have changed your mind,” she remarked. Then turning to her particular friend, she added: “But, Gwen, you aren’t going to work, are you? Pray, what could you do?”
Gwendolyn was in no pleasant frame of mind as her sisters well knew, and her reply was most ungraciously given. Curtly she stated that she did not care to discuss her personal affairs with anyone.
Phyllis flushed and rose at once, saying coldly: “Indeed? Since when have you become so secretive? You always tell me everything you do and so I had no reason to suppose that you would object to my friendly inquiry; but you need have no fear, I shall never again intrude upon your privacy. I will bid you all good afternoon and good-bye, for, of course, since you are going to New York to work, I suppose as clerks in the shops, we will not likely meet again.”
“Aw, I say, Sis, cut it out! What’s the big idea, anyway? A friend is a friend, isn’t he, whether he wears broadcloth or overalls?” Then as his sister continued to sweep out of the room, the lad crossed to the oldest sister and held out his hand, saying, with sincere boyish sympathy, “Gloria, I’m mighty sorry about this – er – this – well, whatever it is, and please let me know where you go, and as soon as you’re settled I’ll run over and play the big brother act, if you’ll let me.”
Then, turning to Bobs, he said: “Go riding with me at sunrise tomorrow morning, will you, like we used to do before I went away to school. There’s a lot I want to say, and the day after I’m going to be packed off to the academy again to be tortured for another month; then, thanks be, vacation will let me out of that prison for a while.” Roberta hesitated, and Dick urged: “Go on, Bob! Be a sport. Say yes.”
“All right. I’ll be at the Twin Oaks, where we’ve met ever since we were little shavers.”
When the door closed behind the departing guests Gloria turned to the sister, who was but one year her junior, and said: “Gwendolyn, I am sorry to say this, but the good of the larger number requires it. If you cannot face the changed conditions cheerfully with us, I shall have to ask you to make your plans independent of us. We three have decided to be brave and courageous, and try to find joy and happiness in whatever may present itself, just as our mother and father would wish us to do, and just as they would have done had similar circumstances overtaken them.”
Gwendolyn rose and walked toward the door, but turned to say, “You need not concern yourselves about me in the least. I shall not go with you to New York. I shall visit my dear friend Eloise Rochester in Newport, as she has often begged me to do.”
“An excellent plan, if – ” Gloria began, then paused.
Gwendolyn turned and inquired haughtily, “If what?”
“If Eloise wants you when she hears that you have neither home nor wealth. If I am anything of a character reader, I should say that the invitation about which you have just told was merely a bait, so to speak, for a return invitation. It is quite evident that Eloise has decided to marry Richard De Laney’s million-dollar inheritance, and since Phyllis will not invite her to their home you, as a next-door neighbor, can be used to advantage.”
“Indeed? Well, luckily Miss Vandergrift, you are not a character reader, as you will learn in the near future. You three make whatever plans you wish, but do not include me.” So saying, Gwendolyn left the room and a few moments later the three sisters heard her moving about in the apartment overhead, and they correctly assumed that she was packing, preparatory for her departure to Newport.
Gloria sighed: “I wonder why Gwen is so unlike our mother and father?” she said.
“I have it,” Bobs cried, whirling about with eyes laughingly aglow. “She’s a changeling! A discontented nurse girl wished to wreak vengeance upon Mother for having discharged her, or something like that, and so she stole the child who really was our sister and left this – ”
“Don’t, Bobsie!” Lena May protested. “Even if Gwen is selfish, maybe we are to blame. She was ill for so long after Mother died that we couldn’t bear the thought of having two deaths, and so we rather spoiled her. I believe that if we meet her contrariness with love and are very patient we may find the gold that must be in her nature, since she is our mother’s child.”
“You can do it, if it’s do-able, Lena May,” Bobs declared. “Now, Gloria, break the glad news! When do we hit the trail for the big town?”
“I’m going in tomorrow to find a place for us to live. If you girls wish, you may accompany me.”
“Wish? Why, all the king’s oxen and all the king’s men couldn’t keep me from going.”
Gloria smiled at her hoidenish sister but refrained from commenting on her language. She was so thankful that there was only one Gwen in the family that she could overlook lesser failings. Bobs was taking the mishap that had befallen them as a great adventure, but even she did not dream of the truly exciting adventures that lay before them.
CHAPTER II.
A PROPOSAL
Soon