Chapter 5

if she got back in season. So the girl bravely entered the taxi-cab and was whirled through the unfamiliar streets to the lawyer's office.

Then she began to quake. She was to beard a lion in his den--and she knew very little about lions!

Number 714 South Wall Street was a big office building; there were, too, taxis passing all the time; so Nancy paid off her chauffeur and entered the building with more boldness in her carriage than she really felt in her heart.

She was studying the building directory when the hall-man came to her assistance.

"Who are you looking for, Miss?" he asked.

"Mr. Henry Gordon."

"Gordon? Is that Gordon & Craig, architects?"

"Mr. Gordon is a lawyer."

"Oh! That's Mr. Gordon, of Ambrose, Necker & Boles. Twelve-forty-four. This way, Miss. Number 6--going up!"

She was hustled into the elevator with a crowd of other people and the car almost immediately began to ascend.

"Floor! Floor!" the boy who manipulated the lever kept calling, and the passengers began to thin out rapidly after the fourth floor was passed.

"What floor, Miss?" he snapped at her.

"Mr. Gordon," stammered Nancy, more than a little confused by the rush of it all. "Twelve-forty-four, the--the gentleman said."

"Twelfth! Here you are!" and the car stopped with a jerk while the boy opened the sliding door with a flourish.

"Forty-four, to the right!" advised the youth, and immediately the car shot up the well out of sight.

The clang of the cage-door echoed through the empty corridor. There were rows of doors, with ground-glass panes, all painted in black or gold with the name of firms, or with the single word, "_Private._"

For a minute Nancy hesitated. Somehow, her ears rang and she had to wink fast to keep back the tears. Yet it was merely nervousness. She knew of no reason why she should be frightened.

Surely her guardian must wish to see her! He probably was a very busy man--perhaps a man without a family. Maybe he lived at a hotel where he could not have his ward come to see him. That was why she had had to spend her vacations heretofore at Malden. Nancy thought of these things, and began to take courage.

She glanced along the corridor. "To the right," the elevator boy had said. She took a few uncertain steps and came opposite Room 1231. Room 1244 must be near.

She persevered, walking almost on tiptoe so as not to awaken the echoes of the lofty corridor, and quickly came before the door numbered 1244. Stenciled upon it was the firm name: "Ambrose, Necker & Boles, Attorneys."

There was nothing about Mr. Gordon. His name did not appear, and she was not sure now that she had reached the goal.

She turned the knob with a flutter at her heart, and stepped into the office. She found herself immediately in a sort of fenced-off stall, with a glass partition on one hand, through which she saw many desks and typewriter tables, at which a score of men and girls were busy.

Directly before her, however, was a gate in the railing and beside the gate--and evidently the Cerberus of the way--was a small, thin boy sitting at a small desk, with his legs wound around his chair legs like immature pythons with blue worsted bodies.

He was supposed to be doing something with a pile of papers and long envelopes; but the truth was he had rigged, with rubber bands, a closely-printed, "smootchy" looking paper-backed storybook before him on the desk, so that on the instant Nancy approached, the rubbers snapped the book back under the desk lid out of sight.

He looked up with little, red-lidded eyes, grinning queerly at her.

"Gee!" he gasped under his breath. "I thought it was the boss." Then aloud he demanded, with hauteur: "Who do you wish to see, lady?"

Now Nancy had not been used to being addressed in so cavalier a manner, and for a moment she did not know how to reply. But in that moment she took a mental picture of the boy that she was not likely to forget.

Besides being diminutive and fleshless, his features were very small and very, very sharp. The generous hand of Nature had sprinkled freckles across his nose. He had lost a front tooth, which fact made his smile perfectly "open."

His watery blue eyes twinkled with mischief. His grin wrinkled up his preternaturally old face in a most remarkable way. His shock of hair was flame-colored--and exactly matched the tie he wore.

"Say!" this youngster said. "You'll know me again; eh? My name's 'Scorch' O'Brien. What's yours?"

"I--I'm Nancy Nelson," confessed the girl, but beginning to smile at him now. He _was_ too funny for anything. "And I've come to see Mr. Gordon."

"Not Old Gudgeon? He never had a lady come to see him before," announced the office boy, explosively. "Sure it's him you want?"

"Mr. Henry Gordon," declared Nancy, in some doubt.

"Henery is his front name," admitted Scorch, rumpling his red top-knot. "But I guess I'd better ask first if he'll have you in."

"Just tell him it's me, please," said Nancy, faintly.

"What did you say the name was, Miss?"

"Nancy Nelson. He'll know. I'm his ward."

"Aw, no! You ain't?"

"Yes, I am," said Nancy, nodding.

"Never knowed he had one. So he is yer guardeen?" grunted the red-haired boy, unwinding his legs.

The girl thought she had chatted quite enough with this very bold youth, so made no further reply.

"Ain't he the sly one?" proceeded "Scorch" O'Brien, shaking his head. "Him a guardeen--an' I never knowed it before."

Evidently the fact that anything of such moment had escaped him rasped the temper of the boy. He went off muttering, and came back again, in a minute, grinning.

"Say! he must have robbed you of the estate. It sure scared him when I announced your name. Never seen him turn a hair before; but he wasn't looking for no 'Nancy Nelson' ter come up and confront him like this."

Nancy, rather offended at this "fresh" youth, swept by him through the gateway and approached the door to which she had seen the flame-haired "Scorch" go in his quest of Mr. Gordon.

Yes! "Mr. Henry Gordon" was painted upon the door. She opened it slowly and looked in.

There was a great, broad table-desk, piled high with books and papers--a veritable wilderness of books and papers. In a broad armchair, with his back to the door, sat "Old Gudgeon," as "Scorch" had disrespectfully called Mr. Henry Gordon.

He was as broad as his chair. Indeed, he seemed to have been forced into it between the arms, by hydraulic pressure. Nancy did not see how he ever _could_ get out of it!

He had enormous shoulders, fairly "humped" with layers of fat. His head was thrust forward as he wrote, and his shaven neck was pink, and bare, and overlapped his collar in a most astonishing way.

"Ahem!" said Nancy, clearing her throat a little. She had come inside and closed the door, and it seemed that Mr. Gordon was giving her no attention.

Then she chanced to look up and, on the wall beyond the desk, was a broad mirror tilted so that the lawyer needed but to raise his eyes to see reflected in the glass all that went on behind him.

And in that glass Nancy got her first glimpse of Henry Gordon's face.

It was really something more than a glimpse. The lawyer was evidently staring at her--had been doing so for some seconds. His great, broad, unwrinkled countenance seemed to have paled on her first appearance, for now the color was washing back into it in a wave of faint pink--a ruddy hue that was natural to so full-bodied a man.

"Come here, girl!"

The voice that rumbled out of Mr. Gordon's throat was commensurate with his bulk. He slowly turned his chair upon its pivot. Trembling, Nancy made her way across the rug to the corner of his desk.

All of a sudden every bit of courage she had plucked up, was swept away. She felt a queer emptiness within her. And in her throat a lump had risen so big that she could not swallow.