Chapter 4: A Club Meeting

The strange procession had not gone very far when Nora heard some one behind calling her name. It was Miss Crawdon, who, as Nora turned around, signalled her to stop.

“Oh, Brenda, Miss Crawdon wishes to speak to us.”

In a moment their teacher had overtaken them.

“I must reconsider my promise to you, or at least, Nora, you partly misunderstood what I said. It will not do at all for you to go home with this little boy. Your mother would blame me very much.”

“Oh, Miss Crawdon,” pouted Brenda. Nora, too, showed her disappointment.

“Now, Brenda, consider what it means. In the first place it is uncertain whether or not you could find his home. In the second place you might have to go into some dirty street or alley. With your mother’s consent I should have nothing to say, but as it is——”

“Well, can’t we go as far as Scollay Square? We could get a car there and go straight home.”

Miss Crawdon hesitated a moment.

“As it happens,” she replied, “I have to go in that direction myself. We will walk together, and I will see you safely on your car. Mrs. Brown and Manuel may lead the way.”

“Isn’t he cunning!” exclaimed Brenda, as the little boy looked over his shoulder at the girls, with one little hand doubled up against his eye, and his other clutching Mrs. Brown’s skirt.

“I wish he would talk to us,” responded Nora. “Where do you live, little boy?” Manuel smiled knowingly. “There,” he said, waving his hand indefinitely toward the Square, across which the electric cars were whizzing.

“Oh, no,” cried Nora, “nobody lives there; there are shops and a hotel, and——”

“Birdies, birdies, there,” cried Manuel.

Even Miss Crawdon smiled as Manuel ran up to a shop window, and pounded the glass, somewhat to the dismay of the parrots exhibited there in their cages.

“Well, he seems to know this shop,” said Mrs. Brown. “We might wait here for a minute.”

At the other side of the shop around the corner was a doorway in which sat a woman with a basket of fruit for sale. Manuel himself was the first to catch sight of her, and rushing forward with a flying leap, he almost knocked her basket over. The little boy had found his tongue, and chattering like a magpie, he pointed toward the ladies. The woman, rising from the step on which she had been sitting, came toward the little group. In broken English she explained that Manuel was her youngest boy, and that sometimes she let him go with her on her round of fruit-selling. Lately she had had her stand near this bird store, and in some way on this particular day, Manuel had wandered away from her.

“You must have been worried,” said Nora.

“Oh, no,” she answered philosophically; “me thought him gone home.”

Then Brenda, who had hitherto kept silent, broke in with a graphic account of the fate Manuel had escaped through Nora’s bravery. The mother probably only half comprehending the young girl’s rapid flow of words, smiled and showed her white teeth. “T’ank you, t’ank you,” she said. “You come and see him some day,” she added, in a general invitation to the group.

“Come, girls, we must hasten,” said Miss Crawdon. “Mrs. Brown will take down Manuel’s address. Then, if your mothers are willing, you may go to see him some day.”