A smile, a bit wavering and uncertain, flickered about the crippled girl’s mouth, as she listened to these two young girls, dressed in white, smiling happily, and the sunlight touching their hair with gold.
“Won’t you talk to us, dear?” asked Kitty, moving closer toward the bedside.
“Yes, dearie,” urged Doris. “Tell us about yourself. We want to be your friends, and we want to make you happy.”
“You must be an angel,” she whispered in a tense voice. “Can you make me well? Can you give me new limbs?”
Gently Doris stroked the little hand and pushed the tangled hair from her face.
“We aren’t angels,” she said kindly. “We’re just girls and very human ones at that.”
“Girls?” Etta echoed blankly.
The word had no significance to her. All her life she had been shut away having been associated entirely with her parents and the Misses Gates. Her bed was not even by the window. Consequently, she had never been able to look down upon the street where children played.
“Don’t you get lonesome here all by yourself?” Doris asked the girl.
Etta nodded.
“Sometimes it seems as though I can’t stand it.”
“Perhaps we can arrange to take you downstairs some afternoon,” suggested Kitty hopefully.
“But I cannot walk!” Tears came into the sad eyes of Etta.
“Oh, don’t cry, dearie,” soothed Doris. “We easily could manage to take you down.”
“It would be fun, Etta.”
“And we have the cutest little dog we found. We call him Wags because he is so good-natured and wags his tail so much.”
Etta’s tears were gone, almost instantly, as this new world of cheer was opened to her by the girls.
“We’ll be your guardian angels. Would you be willing to have us come and help while away the lonesome hours?”
There was no time for further questions, for suddenly Doris and Kitty heard footsteps on the stairway.
Some one was coming!
“We’ll be caught!” Kitty whispered, starting quickly toward the door.
Doris caught her by the hand.
“We can’t make it! We must hide!”
Frantically, the girls looked about the room. They felt that they were trapped.
“The closet,” Doris hissed.
As they moved on tiptoe toward it, Etta held out her hands toward them.
“Don’t go away,” she begged, almost tearfully.
“Sh!” Doris warned. “Just be patient and your ‘angels’ will come back to see you again.”
With that she closed the door of the closet and the two girls crouched against the wall.
“She’ll be almost certain to give us away,” Kitty whispered fearfully. “What a mess we’re in now! Fancy trying to explain our way out of it!”
CHAPTER XXII
A Narrow Escape
Scarcely daring to breathe naturally lest they be discovered, Doris and Kitty crouched in the dark closet. In their haste to hide they had left the door a trifle ajar and though this added to the risk of being detected, it was too late to close it tightly.
Already they could hear some one in the outer sitting room and a moment later the bedroom door was thrown open. Henry Sully came in. He seemed strangely excited and was out of breath from hurrying up the stairs so rapidly.
Peeping out through the crack of the door, the girls saw that he was carrying two long, fat envelopes in his hand.
Rushing across the room, with scarcely a glance directed at Etta, Henry pulled a heavy suitcase from under the bed. Opening it, he placed the two envelopes carefully in the bottom and folded clothing over them.
“Thought we never would find ’em,” the girls heard him mutter.
As he bent over to fasten the suitcase again, Etta plucked at his coat sleeve to attract his attention.
“Father,” she murmured, “I just saw two beautiful angels. They came here to see me.”
Inside the closet, Kitty and Doris gripped each others’ hands nervously. They feared that Etta was about to expose them. What Henry would do if he found them hiding there, they dared not think.
However, the man paid scant attention to what the crippled girl was saying. Impatiently he jerked away from her.
“Stop that silly prattling,” he commanded. “I’m sick of it!”
The girls were shocked at this cruel speech, but what followed left them even more stunned.
“You might as well know it now as later,” Henry told Etta viciously. “We’re tired of looking after you night and day. All you’re good for is to eat and make up fancy fairy tales about angels and the like. This is a hard world and it’s time you learned its ways. Cora and I are going to git out of here pretty soon and, when we do, you can shift for yourself!”
Etta stared at her father as though unable to comprehend what he had said. Then as it slowly dawned upon her that she was to be left to a cruel fate, a shudder convulsed her body. With a frightened cry, she caught Henry by the arm.
“Oh, don’t leave me alone,” she begged piteously. “Don’t leave me to die!”
“Let go!” Henry snarled, pushing her back upon the bed as she endeavored to sit up. “I tell you we’re through with you and it won’t do any good to be squawking about it!”
Shoving the suitcase under the bed with his foot, he turned toward the door. Etta stretched out her thin little arms and entreated him to come back. Henry laughed harshly and slammed the door shut.
Etta became almost hysterical in her grief. She wailed and sobbed and beat upon the pillow with her puny fists, but, if Henry heard, he was not in the least affected. Doris and Kitty could hear him hurrying down the stairs to the second floor.
Satisfied that the coast was clear, they quickly came out of their hiding place. Filled with compassion for Etta, they rushed to her bedside. As the girl saw them, she tried to stifle her sobs.
“There, dear,” Doris tried to comfort her, “don’t cry. We’ll see that no harm comes to you.”
“You won’t let my father go away and leave me?”
“Not unless you want him to,” Doris assured her gently. Under her breath she said to Kitty: “It would almost be better for her if he did leave.”
“She couldn’t have any worse care,” Kitty agreed.
As soon as they had quieted Etta and had made her more comfortable against the pillows, the girls cast an appraising glance about the room. The scene which they had just witnessed made them wonder anew what mischief Henry and Cora Sully were plotting.
“They are planning to get away from here,” Doris said to her chum in a low voice. “That suitcase under the bed was packed.”
“And everything has been taken from the closet,” Kitty added. “There’s Cora’s suitcase back of that couch.”
“It’s packed, too. That means they intend to leave soon. Kitty, we’ll have to keep our wits about us now. And the first thing to do is to get away from this room, before we’re caught.”
The girls had talked so rapidly and in such a low tone that Etta had not heard them, but now as she sensed