<h2 id="c5">CHAPTER V. <br/><span class="small">A STRANGE NEW HOME</span></h2>
<p>Lena May’s clasp on the hand of her older sister
grew unconsciously tighter as they passed a noisy
tobacco factory which faced the East River and
loomed, smoke-blackened and huge.</p>
<p>The old Pensinger mansion was just beyond, set
far back on what had once been a beautiful lawn,
reaching to the river’s edge, but which was now
hard ground with here and there a half-dead tree
struggling to live without care. A wide road now
separated it from the river, which was lined as far
up and down as one could see with wharves, to which
coal and lumber barges were tied.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_44">[44]</div>
<p>The house did indeed look as though it were a
century old. The windows had never been boarded
up, and many of the panes had been broken by stones
thrown by the most daring of the street urchins,
though, luckily, few dared go near enough to further
molest the place for fear of stirring up the
“haunt.”</p>
<p>“A noble house gone to decay,” Gloria said. She
had to speak louder than usual because of the pounding
and whirring of the machinery in the neighboring
factory. Lena May wondered if anywhere in
all the world there were still peaceful spaces where
birds sang, or where the only sound was the murmuring
of the wind in the trees.</p>
<p>“Is it never still here?” she turned big inquiring
eyes toward their guide.</p>
<p>“Never,” Miss Selenski told her. “That is, not
for more than a minute at a time, between shifts,
for when the day work stops the night work
begins.”</p>
<p>“Many of the workers are women, are they not?”
Gloria was looking at the windows of the factory
where many foreign women could be seen standing
at long tables.</p>
<p>“They leave their children at the Settlement
House. They work on the day shift, and the men,
if they can be made to work at all, go on at night.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_45">[45]</div>
<p>“Oh, Gloria!” this appealingly from the youngest,
“will we ever be able to sleep in the midst of such
noise, when we have been used to such silent nights
at home?”</p>
<p>“I don’t much wonder that you ask,” Bobs
laughingly exclaimed, as she thrust her fingers in
her ears, for at that moment a tug on the river, not
a stone’s throw away from them, rent the air with a
shrill blast of its whistle, which was repeated time
and again.</p>
<p>“You won’t mind the noises when you get used
to them,” Miss Selenski told them cheerfully. “I
lived on Seventy-sixth Street, right under the Third
Avenue L, and the only time I woke up was when
the trains stopped running. The sudden stillness
startles one, I suppose.”</p>
<p>Lena May said nothing, but she was remembering
what Bobs had said when they had left the Third
Avenue Elevated: “Now we are to see how the
‘other half’ lives.”</p>
<p>“Poor other half!” the young girl thought. “I
ought to be willing to live here for a time and bring
a little of the brightness I have known into their
lives, for they must be very drab.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_46">[46]</div>
<p>“Just wait here a minute,” Miss Selenski was saying,
“and I’ll run over to the grocery and get the
key.”</p>
<p>She was back in an incredibly short time and
found the three girls examining with great interest
the heavy front door, which had wide panels, a
shapely fan light over them, with beautiful emerald
glass panes on each side.</p>
<p>“I simply adore this knocker,” Bobs declared,
jubilantly. “Hark, let’s hear the echoes.”</p>
<p>The knocker was lifted and dropped again, but
though they all listened intently, a sudden confusion
on the river made it impossible to hear aught else.</p>
<p>“My private opinion is that Marilyn’s ghost
would much prefer some other spot for midnight
prowls,” Bobs remarked, as the old key was being
fitted into the queerly designed lock. “Imagine a
beautiful, sensitive girl of seventy-five years ago
trying to prowl down there where barges are tied to
soot-black docks and where derricks are emptying
coal into waiting trucks. No really romantic ghost,
such as I am sure Marilyn Pensinger must be, would
care to prowl around here.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_47">[47]</div>
<p>Miss Selenski smiled at Bobs’ nonsense. “I’m
glad you feel that way,” she said, “for, of course,
if you don’t believe in the ghost, you won’t mind
renting the house.”</p>
<p>At that moment the derrick of which Bobs had
spoken emptied a great bucket of coal with a deafening
roar, and a wind blowing from the river sent
the cloud of black dust hurling toward them.</p>
<p>“Quick! Duck inside!” Bobs cautioned, as they
all leaped within and closed the door with a bang.</p>
<p>“Jimminy-crickets!” she then ejaculated, using
her favorite tom-boy expression. “The man who
has this place to rent can’t advertise it as clean and
quiet, a good place for nervous people to recuperate.”
Then with a wry face toward her older
sister. “I can’t imagine Gwen in this house, can
you?”</p>
<p>There was a sudden troubled expression in
Gloria’s eyes. “No, dear, I can’t. And I’m wondering,
in fact I have often been wondering this
morning, if we ought not to select some place where
Gwen and little Lena May would be happier, for,
of course, Gwen <i>can’t</i> keep on visiting her friends
forever. She will have to come home some day.”
The speaker felt a hand slip into hers and, glancing
down, she saw a pleading in the uplifted eyes of
their youngest. “I’d <i>like</i> to live here, Glow, for a
while, if you would.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_48">[48]</div>
<p>“Little self-sacrificing puss that you are.” Gloria
smiled at Miss Selenski, then said: “May we look
over the old house and decide if we wish to take it?
Time is passing and we have much packing to do if
we are to return in another day or two.”</p>
<p>Although she did not say so, Bobs and Lena May
knew that their mothering sister was eager to return
to their Long Island home that she might see
Gwendolyn before her departure.</p>
<p>The old colonial mansion, like many others of its
kind, had a wide hall extending from the front to
the back. At the extreme rear was a fireplace with
built-in seats. In fact, to the great delight of Bobs,
who quite adored them, a fireplace was found in
each of the big barren rooms. Four of these were
on that floor, with the old kitchen in the basement,
and four vast silent rooms above, that had been bed
chambers in the long ago. Too, there was an attic,
which they did not visit.</p>
<p>When they had returned to the front hall, Bobs
exclaimed: “We might rent just one floor of this
mansion and then have room to spare.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_49">[49]</div>
<p>But the oldest sister looked dubious. “I hardly
think it advisable to attempt to live in this place—”
she began. “There is enough room here to home
an orphanage, and the kiddies wouldn’t be crowded,
either.”</p>
<p>Roberta was plainly disappointed. “Oh, I say,
Glow, haven’t you always told us younger girls not
to make hasty conclusions, and here you have hardly
more than crossed the threshold and you have decided
that we couldn’t make the old house livable.
Now, I think this room could be made real cozy.”</p>
<p>How the others laughed. “Bobs, what a word
to apply to this old high-ceiled salon with its huge
chandeliers and——”</p>
<p>“Say, girls,” the irrepressible interrupted,
“wouldn’t you like to see all of those crystals sparkle
when the room is lighted?” Then she confessed,
“Perhaps cozy isn’t exactly the right word, but
nevertheless I like the place, and now, with the door
closed, it isn’t so noisy either. It’s keen, take it
from me.”</p>
<p>“Roberta,” Gloria sighed, “now and then I congratulate
myself that you have actually reformed in
your manner of speech, when——”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_50">[50]</div>
<p>“Say, Glow, I’ll make a bargain,” Bobs again interrupted.
“I’ll talk like the daughter of Old-dry-as-dust-Johnson,
if you’ll take this place. Now, my
idea is that we can just furnish up this lower floor.
Make one of the back rooms into a kitchen and
dining-room, put in gas and electricity, and presto
change, there you are living in a modern up-to-date
apartment. Then we could lock up the basement
and the rooms upstairs and forget they are there.”</p>
<p>“If you are permitted to forget,” Miss Selenski
added, with her pleasant smile. Then, for the first
time, the girls remembered that the old house was
supposed to be supernaturally occupied.</p>
<p>It was Bobs who exclaimed: “Well, if that poor
girl, Marilyn Pensinger, wants to come back here
now and then and prowl about her very own ancestral
mansion, I, for one, think we would be greatly
lacking in hospitality if we didn’t make her welcome.”</p>
<p>Then pleadingly to her older sister: “Glow, be
a sport! Take it for a month and give it a try-out.”</p>
<p>Lena May’s big brown eyes wonderingly watched
this enthusiastic sister, who was but one year her
senior, but whose tastes were widely different. Her
gentle heart was already desperately homesick for
the old place on Long Island, for the gardens that
were a riot of flowers from spring until late fall.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_51">[51]</div>
<p>Gloria walked to one of the windows and looked
out meditatively. “If this is the only place in the
neighborhood in which we can live,” she was thinking,
“perhaps we would better take it, and, after all,
Bobs may be right: this one floor can be made real
homelike with the furniture that we will bring, and
what we do not need can be stored in the rooms
overhead.”</p>
<p>Bobs was eagerly awaiting her older sister’s decision,
and when it was given, that hoidenish girl
leaped about the room, staging a sort of wild Indian
dance that must have amazed the two chandeliers
which had in the long ago looked down upon dignified
young ladies who solemnly danced the minuet,
and yet, perhaps the lonely old house was glad and
proud to think that it had been chosen as a residence
for three girls, and that once again its walls would
reverberate with laughter and song.</p>
<p>“We must start for home at once,” Gloria said.
Then, to Miss Selenski, “We will stop on our way
to the elevated and tell Mr. Tenowitz that we will
take the place for a time; and thank you so much
for having helped us find something. We shall want
you to come often to see us.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_52">[52]</div>
<p>Bobs was the last one to leave, and before she
closed the heavy old-fashioned door, she peered back
into the musty dimness and called, “Good-bye, old
house, we’re going to have jolly good times, all of
us together.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_53">[53]</div>
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