le probation officer, then
Frau Nirlanger, and finally Blackie, for no particular reason. I
shrieked my story over the wire in disconnected, incoherent sentences.
Then I rushed back to the little cottage where Alma Pflugel and I waited
with what patience we could summon.

Blackie was the first to arrive. He required few explanations. That
is one of the nicest things about Blackie. He understands by leaps and
bounds, while others crawl to comprehension. But when Frau Nirlanger
came, with Bennie in tow, there were tears, and exclamations, followed
by a little stricken silence on the part of Frau Nirlanger when she saw
Bennie snatched to the breast of this weeping woman. So it was that in
the midst of the confusion we did not hear the approach of the probation
officer and her charge. They came up the path to the door, and there the
little sister turned the knob, and it yielded under her fingers, and the
old door swung open; and so she entered the house quite as Alma Pflugel
had planned she should, except that the roses were not blooming along
the edge of the sunken brick walk.

She entered the room in silence, and no one could have recognized in
this pretty, fragile creature the pitiful wreck of the juvenile court.
And when Alma Pflugel saw the face of the little sister--the poor,
marred, stricken face--her own face became terrible in its agony. She
put Bennie down very gently, rose, and took the shaking little figure in
her strong arms, and held it as though never to let it go again. There
were little broken words of love and pity. She called her "Lammchen" and
"little one," and so Frau Nirlanger and Blackie and I stole away, after
a whispered consultation with the little probation officer.

Blackie had come in his red runabout, and now he tucked us into it,
feigning a deep disgust.

"I'd like to know where I enter into this little drayma," he growled.
"Ain't I got nothin' t' do but run around town unitin' long lost sisters
an' orphans!"

"Now, Blackie, you know you would never have forgiven me if I had left
you out of this. Besides, you must hustle around and see that they need
not move out of that dear little cottage. Now don't say a word! You'll
never have a greater chance to act the fairy godmother."

Frau Nirlanger's hand sought mine and I squeezed it in silent sympathy.
Poor little Frau Nirlanger, the happiness of another had brought her
only sorrow. And she had kissed Bennie good-by with the knowledge that
t