Part 6

"No, nobody could be out there," she said, breathing hard, "but you might get nervous just thinking there might be. We'll go to a room upstairs."

And go we did, in spite of all I could plead about feeling well enough now to go alone and all the rest of it. How was I to get out of a second or third-story window?

I began to think about the Correction again as I followed her upstairs, and after she'd left me I just sat waiting for the doctor to come and send me there. I didn't much care, till I remembered the Bishop. I could almost see his face as it would look when he'd be called to testify against me, and I'd be standing in that railed-in prisoner's pen, in the middle of the court-room, where Dan Christensen stood when they tried him.

No, I couldn't bear that; not without a fight, anyway. It was for the Bishop I'd got into this part of the scrape. I'd get out of it so's he shouldn't know how bad a thing a girl can be.

While I lay thinking it over, the same maid that had brought me the tea came in. She was an ugly, thin little thing. If she's a sample of the maids in that house, the lot of them would take the kink out of your pretty hair, Thomas J. Dorgan, Esquire, late of the House of Refuge and soon of Moyamensing. Don't throw things. People in my set, mine and the Dowager's, don't.

She had been sent to help me undress, she said, and make me comfortable. The doctor lived just around the corner and would be in in a minute.

Phew! She wasn't very promising, but she was my only chance. I took her.

"I really don't need any help, thank you, Nora," I said, chipper as a sparrow, and remembering the name the Dowager had called her by. "Aunt Henrietta is too fussy, don't you think? Oh, of course, you won't say a word against her. She told me the other day that she'd never had a maid so sensible and quick-witted, too, as her Nora. Do you know, I've a mind to play a joke on the doctor when he comes. You'll help me, won't you? Oh, I know you will!" Suddenly I remembered the Bishop's bill. I took it out of my pocket. Yep, Tom, that's where it went. I had to choose between giving that skinny maid the biggest tip she ever got in her life--or Nance Olden to the Correction.

You needn't swear, Tom Dorgan. I fancy if I'd got there, you'd got worse. No, you bully, you know I wouldn't tell; but the police sort of know how to pair our kind.

In her cap and apron, I let the doctor in and myself out. And I don't regret a thing up there in the Square except that lovely red coat with the high collar and the hat with the fur on it. I'd give--Tom, get me a coat like that and I'll marry you for life.

No, there's one thing I could do better if it was to be done over again. I could make that dear little old Bishop wish harder I'd been his daughter.

What am I mooning about? Oh--nothing. There's the watch--Edward's watch. Take it.

II.

Yes, empty-handed, Tom Dorgan. And I can't honestly say I didn't have the chance, but--if my hands are empty my head is full.

Listen.

There's a girl I know with short brown hair, a turned-up nose and gray eyes, rather far apart. You know her, too? Well, she can't help that.

But this girl--oh, she makes such a pretty boy! And the ladies at the hotel over in Brooklyn, they just dote on her when she's not only a boy but a bell-boy. Her name may be Nancy when she's in petticoats, but in trousers she's Nathaniel--in short, Nat.

Now, Nat, in blue and buttons, with his nails kept better than most boys', with his curly hair parted in the middle, and with a gentle tang to his voice that makes him almost girlish--who would suspect Nat of having a stolen pass-key in his pocket and a pretty fair knowledge of the contents of almost every top bureau-drawer in the hotel?

Not Mrs. Sarah Kingdon, a widow just arrived from Philadelphia, and desperately gone on young Mr. George Moriway, also fresh from Philadelphia, and desperately gone on Mrs. Kingdon's money.

The tips that lady gave the bad boy Nat! I knew I couldn't make you believe it any other way; that's why I passed 'em on to you, Tommy-boy.

The hotel woman, you know, girls, is a hotel woman because she isn't fit to be anything else. She's lazy and selfish and little, and she's shifted all her legitimate cares on to the proprietor's shoulders. She actually--you can understand and share my indignation, can't you, Tom, as you've shared other things?--she even gives over her black tin box full of valuables to the hotel clerk to put in the safe; the coward! But her vanity--ah, there's where we get her, such speculators as you and myself. She's got to outshine the woman who sits at the next table, and so she borrows her diamonds from the clerk, wears 'em like the peacock she is, and trembles till they're back in the safe again.

In the meantime she locks them up in the tin box which she puts in her top bureau-drawer, hides the key, forgets where she hid it, and--O Tom! after searching for it for hours and making herself sick with anxiety, she ties up her head in a wet handkerchief with vinegar on it and--rings the bell for the bell-boy!

He comes.

As I said, he's a prompt, gentle little bell-boy, slight, looks rather young for his job, but that very youth and innocence of his make him such a fellow to trust!

"Nat," says Mrs. Kingdon, tearfully pressing half a dollar into the nice lad's hand, "I--I've lost something and I want you to--to help me find it."

"Yes'm," says Nat. He's the soul of politeness.

"It must be here--it must be in this room," says the lady, getting wild with the terror of losing. "I'm sure--positive--that I went straight to the shoe-bag and slipped it in there. And now I can't find it, and I must have it before I go out this afternoon for--for a very special reason. My daughter Evelyn will be home to-morrow and--why don't you look for it?"

"What is it, ma'am?"