Homing E-Book

Grace Livingston Hill

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Jane Scarlett is alone. She has no family, no friends, and no home. Destitute, living in a dingy back room in a boarding house, Jane struggles to survive—and to find hope. Then, through a set of unexpected circumstances, she meets Audrey Havenner and gradually begins to believe that life isn’t as grim as she had thought. But it isn’t until she meets Audrey’s handsome lawyer brother that Jane suddenly finds her life turned completely upside down.

Leseprobe

Grace Livingston Hill

HOMING

Copyright

First published in 1938

Copyright © 2019 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

1938, New York City

The day had been intensely hot. There didn’t seem to be a breath of air stirring anywhere. Even in the great wide store that was supposed to be “air-conditioned” the sultriness of the fervid August day had penetrated.

Jane Scarlett had been working hard all day. Of the two girls who usually helped her at the button and clasp counter, one had been taken sick that noon and gone home, and the other had gone to a picnic. That was Nellie Forsythe. She was pretty and popular with the heads of the department and would get away with it without losing a cent from her pay. Jane shut her lips hard and fanned herself with her handkerchief, after carefully mopping her face. Not many times today had she been able to get enough respite from work to do even that much. It seemed as if there had always been somebody at the counter wanting to look over the whole stock. Not that she had had so many sales, for people weren’t buying buttons and clasps in August, unless they saw a particular lovely bargain.

The fourth girl who usually served at that counter was on vacation. She would return in three more days, that is if she didn’t have to take a few more days’ sick leave to get over her holiday.

Vacation!

Jane’s lips curled. Well, she was supposed to have a vacation, too, but she wasn’t going to take it. She didn’t have to, of course, if she was willing to give it up and go on working. One got a little more money if one worked during vacation time, and she needed the money. She had practically told Mr. Clark, the head of the department, that she wouldn’t balk at staying if he needed her. Why should she go on a vacation anyway? She had no place to go. Of course one could go any place at all just for a rest, but why bother if there wasn’t any place you really wanted to go? If you had to go among strangers? Also, she hadn’t any vacation clothes. She was making last year’s things do, because she really needed a warm coat for winter. Though today in the heat a warm coat seemed less desirable than a summer organdie.

Well, August was almost over, and then the winter’s work would begin. Perhaps if she worked all summer she might get a promotion or something, and that would be nice. She drew a deep breath and gave a tired look around, and then sighted a girl with a button in her hand coming straight toward her. And just at that very minute came the bugle for closing time! It would work out that way, a girl with a button to match at the last minute, on a day like this! Of course she must stay and wait on the girl even if she didn’t buy half a button. That was the rule. She must be polite to late people. She couldn’t put on a distant reproving air and say, “I’m sorry, madam, it’s closing time!” and slam the last drawer back into place as if she had been insulted. They gave lectures to the girls now and again on an attitude like that, and she knew just what happened to girls who persisted in such behavior in spite of the instruction. Of course some of them could get away with it by lying or acting innocent and smiling judiciously. But she scorned an attitude like that.

The girl with the button hastened her steps and arrived definitely at the button counter now, smiling ingratiatingly toward Jane. The bugle gave the last clear note for closing, but Jane shadowed forth a weary smile, with a hope in her heart that the request might be for something she didn’t have.

“I wonder if you can match this button?” said the customer pleasantly.

Jane accepted the button and saw at a glance that she had it. Just a common black button.

“Yes, we have it,” said Jane swinging briskly around and reaching with accustomed fingers to the little drawer where such buttons were kept.

“Oh, I’m so glad!” said the other girl with a relieved sigh. “I came in town just on purpose for those buttons, and then I almost forgot them! I’ll take a dozen. And if you have a smaller size, about right for sleeves, you can give me a dozen of those, too!”

In silence Jane hunted out the smaller size and showed them to her customer, and then with her sharp little scissors cut in half the card that held two dozen.

“It’s terribly hot, isn’t it?” said the customer.

Jane summoned a semblance of a smile and agreed. Her swift fingers were putting the buttons into a bag and accepting the right change, while her mind leaped forward to her freedom.

“I’m ashamed to have kept you a minute longer than closing time,” said the customer as she accepted her package. “I suppose you are just dying to get to your home and put on the coolest thing you own.”

Jane smiled then.

“Oh, that’s all right,” she said. And then, following a sudden impulse she added: “You see, I haven’t any home! I never have had. And I guess after all this store is cooler than the little third-story back room where I board.”

“Oh! I’m sorry!” said the other girl. And then added earnestly: “Come on down with me to the shore. I’d love to have you. We have a cottage right close to the beach and there’s a big cool guest room overlooking the ocean. I know Mother would welcome you. Will you come?”

Jane felt something unaccustomed like a sudden rush of tears near the surface, and a little blaze of glory came into her pale face.

“Oh, thank you! I couldn’t! But it was dear of you to suggest it. Just the memory of your asking me will quite cool me off for the evening.”

“Well, I wish you could come. I’d like to get to know you. When I get back to the city I’ll look you up. Maybe we can plan something nice together. I’m really grateful to you for being so nice when I kept you after hours. May I know your name?”

“Oh! Why, it’s Scarlett. Jane Scarlett!”

“What a lovely name. I won’t forget that. Good-bye. I’ll be seeing you again sometime in the fall.”

Jane watched her as she walked away, a lovely graceful girl in expensive clothes, with a beautiful summer home by the sea, and probably a lovelier one back in the city. But why had she answered her that way? Blurting out to her that she had no home, and never had had one? What a silly thing to do! Sob stuff, that was what it was. The kind of thing she just loathed. She had been guilty of that! She was aghast at herself.

Abruptly she turned and put the card of buttons back in its drawer, slammed it shut, drew down the gingham covers over the whole section, and went on her way, hurrying her steps to make up for the loss of time.

And Audrey Havenner, the girl with the parcel of buttons, took a taxi to the station and boarded the bridge train to the shore. In due time she arrived at the lovely place beside the sea and got herself into charming filmy garments for evening.

“Did you have a very uncomfortable time in the city, dear, this hot day? I understand the mercury fairly soared in town.”

Her mother said this conversationally at the dinner table after the meal was well under way.

“This certainly wasn’t a very good day to select for shopping,” remarked her father with a lifting of his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t have gone in town if I hadn’t had to.”

“Nor I,” said Kent, her older brother, emphatically. “You women never do know when you’re well off.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” said Audrey cheerily. “The stores are air-conditioned, you know.”

“Yes? Well, for all that, I’d have stayed in a cool place by the sea if I’d had my choice.”

“So would I,” said Audrey amiably, “but, you see, I didn’t have my choice. I went in town to see a friend who is in the hospital and is deadly lonely, and incidentally I did the shopping for the family. By the way, Dad, I got your buttons that you are always talking about. I almost forgot them, too, and went back at the last minute. Came near missing my train in the act. And Mother, I nearly brought a guest out with me.”

“Why didn’t you, dear? Who was it?”

“Nobody I ever saw before. She waited on me for coat buttons after the bugle blew and was as sweet as she could be.”

“They have to be, or they’d get fired!” said Kent, importantly.

“Oh, but this was a different kind of sweetness, brother,” said Audrey lightly. “This was really courtesy.”

“Heavens! Courtesy in a button salesgirl!” exclaimed Evalina Harrison, a self-invited second cousin who had been with them all summer. “Is that the kind of guests you pick out to land on us? I’m glad you restrained your impulses. This cottage is already overcrowded.”

“Why, I didn’t restrain my impulses,” said Audrey. “She did it for me. I did invite her. You see, I realized I had kept her overtime, and I apologized and told her I knew she was just dying to get home and get into the coolest thing she had and rest. She looked terribly warm, and utterly tired out. But she just smiled and said that was all right. She hadn’t any home and never had had. And then of course I really tried hard to make her come. I told her Mother would have given her a lovely welcome. But she wouldn’t come.”

“Heavens, Audrey!” said Evalina. “Haven’t you any discretion? And don’t you know her at all? I don’t think that was being very kind to the rest of us. She might have been an awful nuisance. You really ought to think of your brothers, Audrey. A girl like that would be very likely to get notions in her head about Kent, think he was in love with her and all that!”

“Yes, Audrey,” put in Kent solemnly, “you really ought to protect my tender impressionable youth!”

Audrey laughed.

“But really, Audrey, I mean it. A sister should be careful about strange girls. You don’t even know her name, do you?” persisted the cousin.

“Oh, yes, I do!” said Audrey with a comical twinkle in her eye. “She has a lovely name. I asked her what it was and she told me. I told her I wanted to get acquainted with her sometime when I got back to town.”

“Audrey!” said her cousin. “That’s just like you! Have you no discretion at all? Cousin Mary, I hope you’ll forbid an acquaintance like that. A mere button saleswoman! The perfect idea!”

“What was her name, Aud? Kent is all ears to hear it!” grinned the fourteen-year-old wickedly, his eyes on the elderly cousin.

“Her name is Jane Scarlett!” said Audrey with a twinkle at her young brother.

“Jane Scarlett?” said Kent looking up in amazement and dropping his fork on his plate with a sharp clash. “You don’t mean it!”

Audrey looked up with a startled expression.

“Why? Do you know her, Kent?” A shade of half fear crossed her face, lest after all her cousin would really think there was some ground for her insinuations.

“Great Scott!” said Kent excitedly. “Jane Scarlett! No, I don’t know her, but I’ve been hearing her name almost all day long. She’s been more talked of in our law office than any other one person today. Great Caesar’s ghost! Jane Scarlett. If I could really locate her I’d get the attention of the office turned to my humble self, I guess! She’s very much wanted, and nobody knows where to find her. But then, I don’t suppose she’s the right one.”

“Yes,” said Cousin Evalina, “I thought so! Some criminal, I suppose! What’s she done? Killed somebody?”

“No!” said Kent crossly. “Nothing like that! Just a matter of when she was born and a few dates. You wouldn’t understand.”

“H’m!” said Evalina offendedly. “She’s probably trying to break a will or something. I told you, Audrey, that you should never ingratiate yourself to strangers. You can’t tell what they’ll turn out to be!”

Kent opened his lips with a glare toward Evalina and then closed them firmly and drew one corner of his mouth down in quiet amusement.

“You’re wrong again, Cousin Evalina, but I’m not telling any more about it. This isn’t my business, it belongs to the office, and I’ve no right to go around discussing it. Which store was that, Audrey? Stevens and Drake?”

“No, Windle and Harrower.”

“You see!” said Cousin Evalina. “The mischief is done. Now if anything happens it will be your fault, Audrey!”

The brother and sister twinkled their eyes at each other.

“My sins be upon my own head!” said Audrey comically.

Then there was a momentary cessation of the conversation as the dessert was brought in, and as callers came in for the evening the subject was not again taken up. The young people hoped their cousin had forgotten.

But Evalina never forgot. She came into Audrey’s room late that evening while she was preparing to retire and told long gruesome stories of young men who had made unfortunate marriages that might have been avoided, until finally Audrey was driven to get into bed, and her pleasant regular breathing soon proclaimed that she was asleep, so that Evalina was forced to turn out the light and retire to her own room.

Audrey was up quite early the next morning and walked with her brother to his train.

“Kent! What is this you are going to do to the girl I discovered yesterday? Because I won’t stand for anything happening to her. She’s fine! And I shan’t tell you where she is if—”

“You’ve already told me!” he laughed. “Have you forgotten!”

“Kent! I protest! You shan’t do anything to her. You shan’t get her in any jams. I saw the dark, tired circles under her eyes, and if you give her any added troubles I’ll feel that it was all my fault. Why can’t you just ignore what I told last night? Forget it! You haven’t any right at all to take advantage of my confidences. I was just talking for the benefit of my family, and it’s disloyal to take what I said and make trouble for someone I like who did me a real favor. I tell you truly, Kent, if you go and hunt up that girl and put your old law firm on her track I’ll telephone her before you get there and tell her to make tracks for Nowhere and hide till I give her the high sign. I really will. I mean it, brother!”

“Say look here, kid, what do you think I am?” laughed the brother. “A sleuth? Or a gangster? I’m not even a detective. I wasn’t hunting for this girl myself, but I knew the whole office force was put to it to find her whereabouts, and it’s such a peculiar name I couldn’t help but notice. Of course I shouldn’t have said a word, not before the highly respectable cousin anyway. But you needn’t worry about that girl. If she’s the right one, which I very much doubt, because they are searching for her up in New England at a school, nothing will happen to her except what is perfectly all right. I don’t know just what it is, but you needn’t think I’m going to hurt your protégée. They’ll only ask her a few simple questions, what her father’s name was, and where she was born—things like that.”

“It’ll scare her to death!”

“Not at all. They’ll tell her it’s for some statistics the law firm is working on, and if she is the child of the wrong father they’ll beg her pardon and buy a few buttons and make their way out of your old store, and nobody any the wiser.”

“Are you being square with me?”

“I sure am. Now, will you be good? And for Pete’s sake, don’t tell a word of what I said to the cousin with the gimlet eyes. Let her marry me off to a few heathen maidens or whatever she likes, but just laugh.”

Audrey gave her brother a long, level look.

“All right, brother, when you look like that I know I can trust you. I just wanted you to know that this girl is an all-right girl, and I won’t have her pestered.”

Her brother grinned wisely. “All right, kiddo. You win,” he said gravely, “but it beats me how you found all that out in ten minutes while you bought coat buttons. I know you have pretty good hunches about people and they usually come out right, but I just want you to be sane and realize that you couldn’t be trusted in a casual glance like that to sift out a possible criminal. Some of them are pretty slick, you know.”

“Yes, I know. But this girl is a real lady.”

Her brother studied her for a moment and then he said: “Oh, yeah?”

“Well, wait till you see her yourself—if you do,” said Audrey sharply.

“Yes—if I do!”

Chapter 2

Most of the other girls with whom Jane occasionally walked partway had already gone, and when she came out of the store after selling Audrey the coat buttons, her own footsteps lagged as she reached the hot pavement. What was the point in her hastening to her stifling little third-story back bedroom? It would be unbearable there now, and hard enough to bear after dark. It was too hot to light her tiny flame of an oil stove and attempt any cooking. Even a cooked cereal would heat up the place so she couldn’t sleep afterward, and to heat a can of soup would fill the room with the smell of onions. Besides, she didn’t want anything to eat. She wished she didn’t have to eat. It was too hot to eat. But of course she must eat. Well, probably ice cream would be best. Ice cream and a cracker. Maybe not even a cracker. She had crackers in her room she could eat later if she got hungry. Perhaps she would just get some ice cream now and then go around by the little park and sit there on a bench. Perhaps there would be a breath of air and she could get cool. Anyway it would be pleasant to walk past the trees and shrubs and hear the fountain splashing, for it wasn’t likely she could get an empty bench at this time of the day.

So Jane turned her steps toward the place where she could get the best ice cream for the least money, and after she had eaten it slowly, she wandered out toward the park. But to her disappointment she found her worst fears justified. Every bench in the whole place was occupied by tired, discouraged-looking people. Some of them were dirty people, with indiscriminate garments, coatless and hatless, men in shirtsleeves, women in dresses of a bygone day, with straggling hair, a few more smartly dressed but with such a look of utter hopelessness upon them that Jane could not bear to look at them. Not one of them looked as if he had a home, or a family who cared, much less a home by the sea like the girl who had come to buy buttons. That old woman over there with the run-down shoes, and eyes that looked as if they had wept till there were no more tears, what would she say if she were invited to spend the night in a pretty room in a cottage by the sea? Suppose she had such a cottage and could go up to that poor old creature and ask her to come and spend the night with her? Or that young thing over there with the tattered dirty green frock and the three whining children, one of them a babe in arms? Didn’t she have a husband? Where was he? Why didn’t he take care of her? Well, perhaps he was out of work! Oh, this was a hard world!

She walked briskly on past them all, feeling that in spite of her homeless lot and her little hot third-story back room, she still had something to be thankful for. And she definitely didn’t want to sit down there in the park with that tired, discouraged mess of people and class herself with them. Not unless she could do something to relieve them. Doubtless they all had some kind of habitation even if it wasn’t worthy of the name home, and they were just out here to try to get cool the way she was. There! There was one who had some sense. Another little mother with two children. She had a clean dress on. To be sure the sleeves were cut off above the elbow, and the neck turned down for coolness, but even the children were clean. They were sitting on the grass against a sheltering clump of shrubbery, one child kicking its bare feet lazily and chewing on a crust of bread, the other sound asleep by an empty bottle. Jane Scarlett wished she might find a sheltering bush and lie down and kick her feet, too, she was so tired, and it did seem a little cooler here among the green things. The sun had definitely gone down now, and there was perhaps a trifle of breeze coming up from the river way. Or was it just the sound of the splashing fountain that made her think so? Well, she had better get back to her room. She had some stockings to wash. That would cool her off for a few minutes perhaps, and if she could just get to sleep it would soon be morning. Morning was always a little relief, even in hot weather. And besides, she had that invitation to spend the night at the seashore to think about. If she went about it in the right way she could really imagine herself perhaps accepting it sometime.

As she walked on up the street of closed offices with dim lights in the distant depths, her thoughts went back in her life, and she tried to imagine what it would have been if she had ever had a real home where she belonged.

Then she saw a familiar figure approaching. Who was it? Somebody she ought to know? Why did he stir an unpleasant memory? Oh yes, the new floor-walker in the next department. Stockings! His jurisdiction was just across the main aisle from the buttons. He had only been with the store a couple of days, but she couldn’t help seeing him often, although she had never spoken with him. Just yesterday she had seen him in intimate conversation with Nellie Forsythe. She had inadvertently caught a snatch of a sentence, and it disgusted her. He was good looking, with hair that must be a perm, and long golden eyelashes. But she didn’t like his mouth. It didn’t seem trustworthy. Jane wasn’t a girl who lost her head over young men. There had been a mother in her life who had spent time warning her mite of a girl who was presently going to be left alone.

However, it didn’t matter what his mouth was like. She didn’t know him and wasn’t likely to, though every other girl in his section was wild over him and made it quite apparent. He wouldn’t ever have time to notice her of course. Not that she cared.

Then suddenly the young man turned his head, looked her full in the face and stopped.

“Oh, I say, aren’t you somebody I’m supposed to know?” he asked engagingly.

Jane gave him a level look and answered coolly: “I’m afraid not.” Her tone was distant.

“Oh, but you’re from Windle and Harrower’s, aren’t you? I’m sure I’ve seen you in the store. You’re not from perfumes and sachet, are you?”

“No,” said Jane matter-of-factly, “only buttons. I’m on the other side of the middle aisle. You wouldn’t have met me.” There was no encouragement in her voice.

“Oh, but I’ve noticed you. Yes, I have. Buttons, of course! I’ve watched you on the side. I’ve noticed how well you do your work and how people seem to like you. Noticed your smile, you know. You’re a good saleswoman. And buttons aren’t easy, either. It takes patience to be a good button salesperson. You had a late customer tonight, didn’t you? I noticed you were charming her. It takes a real lady to be patient and smile the way you did to a latecomer on a hot night like this. But she didn’t keep you all this time surely!”

“Oh, no. She kept me only a minute or two. I stopped on my way to get some dinner.”

“Dinner? Oh, that’s too bad. I was going to ask you to have some dinner with me. Well, how about a movie then? I’m not keen on dinner myself tonight. It’s too hot to eat. But you and I must get together and get acquainted.”

Jane lifted an independent young chin.

“Thank you,” she said, “I’m busy tonight. I have work to do.”

“Goodness! Work on a night like this? Have a heart, lady! Don’t you know this is the time for relaxation? Well, then, how about tomorrow night?”

“Thank you, no,” said Jane coolly.

“Now, Beautiful, that’s no way to behave. What have you got against me?”

“Nothing whatever,” said Jane crisply. “I am not in the least acquainted with you, you know.”

“Oh, is that it? High hat? Well, next time I’ll try and bring my credentials with me. But how about having at least a cool little drink with me somewhere? I might be able to find a mutual friend if we had the time.”

“Excuse me,” said Jane, “I’m in a hurry,” and she smiled distantly and marched on, her proud little lifting of her chin, and her dignified carriage, covering a sudden tendency to tremble.

So he thought he could pick her up as casually as he did those other girls in the store. Well, he would find she was not so easily picked. Of course, it wasn’t that he was exactly a stranger. He was employed in the same store with herself, and she had happened to hear his name called by cash girls and saleswomen in his department: “Mr. Gaylord! Oh, Mr. Gaylord! Will you sign this schedule for the customer, please!” He was just not the type of person she cared to companion with in any way. A young man who had his hair permed and talked to a girl that way the first time he ever spoke to her! It would have been different perhaps if she were in his department and had been formally under his management. It would even have been different if he had been in the store for some time and had been formally seeing her in the regular business gatherings. But she definitely didn’t like him anyway. She had seen him stroking Isabel Emory’s hand fondly just before the girl with the button came.

She hurried on trying to put him entirely out of her mind, but there was a distinct uneasiness concerning him. His bold eyes darting into her quiet life disturbed her strangely, as if there were some undefined alarm connected with him, and that was absurd of course. He had nothing whatever to do with her, and never would have if she maintained her aloofness, as of course she would.

With a sigh she entered the dingy boardinghouse where she resided. The atmosphere was of numberless dreary meals lingering at the door to meet her, the aroma of greasy fried potatoes, of ancient fried fish, of unappetizing meats, and onions, of pork, and spoiled fat that had burned. It smote her in the face on the breath of the heavy heat of the day and made her suddenly dead tired and heartsick.

She climbed to the third floor to her gloomy room where the evening sun was scorching in at the single window, pricking through the worn old green window shade, burning every breath of the air out and intensifying the dusty breathlessness of the apartment till it almost seemed unbearable.

Jane shut the door despairingly because the smell of the burning fat was even worse up here than down in the hall. Taking off her hat she flung herself down across her bed and let hot, discouraged tears pour out of her tight-shut eyes.

Suddenly it came to her what a fool she was. Here she had been offered a chance to go down to the shore and spend a night in a lovely cool guest room by the sea, and also she had been asked to dinner by a personable young man; she could have had an appetizing meal in cheerful company, she could have attended a movie in a room that would have been air-conditioned and cool, and she had declined them all! But she still had her self-respect! Why bother about smells and breathlessness? She had this quiet place and her self-respect, even if the air wasn’t good. Someday perhaps she might be able to afford a better spot. Till then she had better be content.

She lay a few minutes getting the ache out of her tired feet, and then she got up and washed her face in the tepid water that had stood all day in her water pitcher. It was good to get her face wet, and her wrists and arms, and summer didn’t last forever. There would be bitter cold in the winter, with no fire whatever in her room and the necessity of opening the hall door to take the intense chill from the air.

There was cabbage coming up the hallway now, and fried apples, but she knew just how they would look, little gnarly apples, with specks in them. She was not going down to dinner at all tonight. The ice cream she had eaten was enough. She couldn’t bear the thought of the dinner that would be served in that house.

She took her water pitcher and went down one flight to the bathroom to fill it and then got out some soap flakes and washed a pair of stockings and some underwear. After that she was so tired she lay down and went to sleep. The drying clothes broke the dry heat of the August night and made a little moisture in the room, and by and by she had a dream. She dreamed that she had gone to the shore with that lovely customer and was lying in a beautiful soft bed with a great cool breeze blowing over her and the smell of the sea in the air. But after a time she suddenly woke up again and the room was terribly hot and breathless, the ham and cabbage were lurking on the edges of the ceiling, and a fire siren was blowing with all its might.

Jane lay there panting with the heat and thinking how hard things were in her life. It was harder now than she ever remembered it before.

She had been a very little girl when her father died. They were living at the time in a tiny apartment in a western city. Jane could remember the many stairs they had to climb, because her mother always had to stop and rest between landings. It seemed that she had always been climbing stairs.

Dimly she remembered the two rooms where she and her mother lived next, and her mother took in sewing. Her mother wasn’t well. She coughed a great deal and had a pain in her side, but she was always there when Jane came home from kindergarten, and then from grammar school. And nights when they went to bed early to save light her mother would talk to her, and give her many precepts and principles, wrapped in engaging stories, which she told her were to be remembered for life. And Jane had asked questions and gained a pretty good idea of life and the way it should be lived.

But she never remembered any time when the place they had to live in was so unbearably hot as this little room of hers. Perhaps she ought to give up saving for a nice winter coat and change her room for a cooler one. Perhaps—well perhaps she should have accepted that invitation to the shore for the night and got really cooled off and rested for once. No! She never could have done that of course. They were strangers, and she was only a poor girl whom they would have felt sorry for and despised. Probably the girl’s mother would have been cross if she had brought her home, too. Of course she could not have gone with a stranger!

Well—perhaps—was there any possibility she ought to have put her pride in her pocket and gone with that manager of the stocking department? Got a good dinner and had a little laugh and a restful time, and perhaps been able to sleep afterward? That was what other girls did, unless they had homes, pleasant comfortable homes, where there was some way to get cool in such intolerable heat.

No, she couldn’t do that! Not if she died of starvation and heat would she go with a man who had a perm and held hands with all the pretty girls in the store, not even if she knew him. She couldn’t respect a man like that.

Had her mother been right in giving her such high standards of taste and principle?

Yes, of course! There was no question about that.

After a time she got up and looked out her window. There wasn’t much satisfaction in looking. She could only see a limited number of redbrick walls and tin roofs and chimneys, with a high red distant glow as if the fire must have been a very bad one.

She touched her meager wash hanging across a string from the bureau to the post of the bed and found everything dry. That was a comfort anyway. She could wear fresh garments in the morning. One was always cooler after a bath, even if it was only a sponge bath, if one could put on fresh garments.

So she crept back to her hard, hot bed, and finally fell asleep again, but woke in the morning only half refreshed. She could smell the breakfast fumes rolling up from the open kitchen window. Codfish on a morning like this! Blistering hot! And it was spoiled codfish, too; it smelled that way! They had had it that way once before. The landlady always bought enough for two days of anything like that. Well, she would ask for a hard-boiled egg. She would not take codfish!

If this heat lasted she must find a better place to board. It was unbearable to think of staying here any longer.

Then her little alarm clock whizzed out a warning and Jane got sadly up and went at the work of dressing.

Another hot day ahead of her, hard work, and nothing to relieve the monotony! Of course there was young Gaylord, the stocking manager. She might smile at him if she were that kind of girl, and perhaps he would ask her again to go out to dinner and somewhere for the evening. She was so utterly sick of the monotony of life in this awful little hot hole of a room, with no cheerful contacts anywhere except such as one could find among her department store customers.

Well, of course that was all nonsense! She wasn’t going back on the principles her mother had taught her. She was going to go steadily on trying to do as nearly right as possible. And perhaps someday God would give her a break!

That sounded rather irreverent, too. Mother wouldn’t have liked her to talk like that. Mother always wanted her to go to church. But she had gotten out of the habit when Mother was so terribly sick.

Then there had been the time after Mother died, when Great-Aunt Sybil, a widow who lived in Connecticut and had two summer places, one at the mountains and one at the shore, had sent for her and looked her over for a few weeks, finally fitting her out with some indiscriminate garments belonging to her two daughters who needed more fashionable wardrobes, and sent her off to a strange stupid school in the country where you worked for your board and learned very little. But Great-Aunt Sybil had married again and had shunted Jane off by getting her a place to do kitchen work on a farm where they kept summer boarders. The two daughters had meantime married and passed out of the picture. Then when fall came and the summer boarders had departed, the farmer and his wife bought a trailer and left for Florida. Jane, obviously not wanted, took matters in her own hands and hiked by slow stages to this city where she finally got a job in a department store where now at last she had a small foothold, faithfully doing her best, and working up from cash girl to notions, and from notions to buttons.

But this morning with the heat over everything, and the smell of the unappetizing breakfast coming up the stairs, Jane groaned within herself. Of course she was glad she had made some progress, but oh, how long at this rate would it be before she ever had a decent place to call home? Would she ever have a home, a real home? Probably not. Other girls expected to get homes by marrying, but Jane felt she would never be willing to marry the kind of man who might ask her. She wasn’t at all pretty, she told herself, as she gave a disapproving look in her mirror and slicked her hair coolly back. It was only pretty girls who attracted nice, refined men who could provide comfortable homes. Homes where on a morning like this, one could go calmly down to breakfast expecting to find cool melon set in ice, or thin glasses of orange juice, delicate hot biscuits, cereal with real cream, and coffee that was a joy to drink.

With a sigh Jane fastened the buttons of her thinnest shirtwaist dress and went downstairs to begin another hot day.

Chapter 3

Kent Havenner walked into the office that morning and went straight to the senior member of the firm.

“Well, I’ve found a Jane Scarlett for you. Whether she’s the right Jane or not I don’t know, but she’s a Scarlett, anyway. At least she says she is.”

“You don’t say!” said the senior lawyer, who was J. Waltham Sanderson and quite well known and respected in the world. “Now how in the world did you go about it to find one after all our combing of the country failed?”

“Well, you see, I didn’t go about doing it at all. It wasn’t my business of course. But I heard the name mentioned so many times in connection with that case that I couldn’t get it out of my head, and when I heard my sister mention it quite casually last night it clicked of course.”

“Your sister! Why, Havenner, does your sister know the girl?”

“Well, no, she’s not a personal acquaintance at all, but she bought some buttons from her late yesterday afternoon at Windle and Harrower’s.”

“Why, that’s most extraordinary! Had she known her before?”

“No, I think not. The girl looked tired and hot and my sister is always making friends in the most unexpected places. You see, she took a notion to the girl’s looks or something and she asked her name. Or perhaps she was afraid she might have to return the buttons. Anyhow, she asked her name, and it was so unusual that she told us about it when she got home.”

“Well, that’s most extraordinary!” said Mr. Sanderson. “Of course she may not be the right one as you say, but even at that, it is encouraging to have found a Scarlett, for she or her family may be able to put us in touch with some other branch of the family. Scarlett, after all, is a most unusual name. And then again, she may be a daughter or niece of the Jane Scarlett for whom we are searching. Have you told Mr. Edsel?”

“No, I just got in,” said Kent.

“Well, he ought to know at once. Edsel!” he called, lifting his voice a trifle, as a man about forty-five entered the outer office. Mr. Edsel came in and stood beside the desk, a tall, stern man with keen eyes, and hair silvering at the edges.

“Havenner here tells me he has found a Jane Scarlett,” announced the senior lawyer.

The keen eyes searched Kent Havenner’s face.

“Sure she’s the right one?” he asked.

“Not at all,” said Kent. “I haven’t even seen her yet, only heard there is one.”

“Well, I won’t have time to do any investigating today. Not till I get back from Chicago. Why don’t we let Havenner handle this himself?” he asked, looking at Sanderson. “I think he could find out what we want to know as well as I could.”

“I was just going to suggest that,” said Mr. Sanderson. “You really can’t delay that Chicago matter even a train, and I think it is quite important that we find out at once whether this person is the right one, else she may vanish from our sight while we delay.”

“That’s all right with me,” said Edsel. “I’ll give you all the papers, Havenner, and I wish you good luck. If you find it is a false lead it won’t be the first one we’ve had. I never supposed any color as bright as Scarlett could be so hard to find in broad daylight.” He said it with a twinkle in his eyes. “I’ll get you the data, Havenner, and if you can discover anything on this case nobody will be gladder than I.”

So, a few minutes later, Kent Havenner, armed with the necessary credentials and a paper containing questions that must be answered, started out to find Jane Scarlett.

He went to Mr. Windle first. He knew him personally, and moreover the name of the famous law firm that he represented would have given him an audience anywhere in the city.

Mindful of his promise to his sister he was most careful about what he said:

“Mr. Windle, I’m not going to take your time. I know you’re busy at this hour of the day. I’ve just come to you for permission to see one of your employees for about five minutes. I think she may be able to give us a few dates and names that will help us in our search for somebody. I won’t keep her but a very few minutes. We just want to make a contact with her.”

“Delighted to serve you in any way we can, Mr. Havenner. What is her name?”

“Scarlett. Jane Scarlett. I have been told that she is at the button counter. I could have gone there and searched of course, but I wanted your permission to speak to her during working hours. And we do not know her address so we cannot go to her elsewhere.”

Mr. Windle turned to his secretary.

“See if we have a Jane Scarlett at the button counter and ask them to send her up here. You know, Mr. Havenner, some of our salespeople are on vacation now at this slack season. I hope she is here.”

“I was told that someone saw her there yesterday. But Mr. Windle, don’t let us trouble you here. I can go down and speak to her at the counter. It’s only a few simple questions I want to put to her.”