gh to detect and resent this. She chuckled
as she watched Frances' clouded face.

"O never mind, Frances," Elsie Harding whispered under cover of a brisk
discussion on old ladies, that Lena's words had started, "Lena's just
talking for effect. She won't take the trouble to go to the Home."

XII

NANCY REXTREW

But that was where Elsie was mistaken. Lena did go the very next
afternoon, and dragged the reluctant Eva with her. The girls, proposing
to join the Sunday promenade on the Avenue later, were in their Sunday
best when they presented themselves at the big, old-fashioned frame
house on Capitol Hill.

"Who you goin' to ask for?" Eva questioned as Lena, lifting the old
brass knocker, dropped it sharply.

"The Barlow angel, I s'pose. We don't know the name of anybody else
here," Lena returned with a grin.

The maid who answered their summons told them to go right upstairs. They
would find Mrs. Barlow in Room 10 on the second floor. So they went up,
Lena's eyes, as always, keen and alert, Eva scowling, and wishing
herself "out of it."

"Here's No. 6--it must be that second door beyond," Lena said in a low
tone; but low as it was, somebody heard, for the next door--No. 8--flew
open instantly, and a woman stepped briskly out and faced the girls.

"Come right in--come right in," she said with an imperative gesture.
"My! But I'm glad to see ye!"

So compelling was her action that, with a laugh, Lena yielded and Eva
followed her as a matter of course.

The woman closed the door quickly, and pulled forward three chairs,
planting herself in the third.

"My land, but it's good to see ye sittin' there," she began. "What's yer
names? Mine's Nancy Rextrew."

Lena gave their names, and the woman repeated them lingeringly, as if
the syllables were sweet on her tongue. Then she tipped her head, pursed
her lips, and gave a little cackling laugh.

"I s'pose ye was bound fer her room--Mis' Barlow's, eh?" she questioned.

"Yes," Lena admitted, "but----"

"I don't care nothin' about it if you was!" Nancy Rextrew broke in
hastily, her little black eyes snapping and her wrinkled face all alive
with eager excitement. "I don't care a mite if you was. Mis' Barlow has
somebody a-comin' to see her nigh about every day, an' I've stood it
jest as long as I can. Yesterday when the Chapin girl an' the Harding
girl stayed along of her half the afternoon I made up my mind that the
next girl that came through this corridor