CHAPTER IV.

A SERIOUS MATCHMAKER.

When Marion alighted from her train at the Grand Central Depot it was almost midnight, but she was not frightened a particle.

“It doesn’t seem much like the first time I came,” she said to the gentleman and lady who sat just behind her and who had been talking to her pleasantly during the last part of the journey.

“How so?” asked the gentleman, with an interested look.

“Why, I was as green as grass,” said Marion, laughing. “I had on a homespun frock and a simple little straw hat, and it was my very first glimpse of a real city. You can’t imagine how lonesome I felt. And then, do you know, I did not have a friend to meet me, while to-night my sister will be here as well as a dear friend who lives with us.”

“Do tell us your name,” said the lady, as they walked slowly down the platform in the long line of passengers.

“Marion Marlowe,” said the young girl, promptly, “and here is my address,” she said, handing her a slip of paper; “but after Monday I shall be on Blackwell’s Island. I am going there as a nurse—‘on probation,’ of course—at Charity Hospital.”

“Then I may see you again, because I go there often,” said the lady, quickly. “My name is Mrs. Brookes, and I am a member of a mission that visits the Island regularly.”

“And as I am to be a physician, I may see you, too,” said the gentleman, smiling. “I am Reginald Brookes, a student at the ‘P. and S.’ This lady is my mother, and at present I am a bachelor.”

Both ladies laughed, and they all shook hands.

The next moment Marion spied Dollie and her friend, Miss Allyn, and the three girls were soon together.

“Oh, we’ve found the cunningest little flat you ever saw, Marion,” said Dollie, as the girls were disrobing in their room a little later, “and Miss Allyn and I are to keep house together, and there’s to be a bed for you whenever you can get away from the Island.”

“It’s a hard place to get away from,” said Miss Allyn, smiling; “but as you are only to go up for three months, Marion, I suppose there’s some use in keeping a bed for you.”

“Oh, I hope I’ll stay longer than that,” laughed Marion. “Why, I’d hate to be sent away when my probationary term was over. I’d almost be tempted to commit some crime that would send me back——”

Miss Allyn was a newspaper reporter who had been their dearest friend ever since the girls began their search for work in the big city. She was not as beautiful as the two country girls, but she made up in wisdom what she lacked in beauty.

“You are our encyclopedia, directory, almanac and family guide,” Marion had told her, but Miss Allyn was too modest to admit her worth. She was one of the few who could do favors without becoming obtrusively patronizing. Dollie Marlowe was eager to hear about her sister’s visit to their parents, and her blue eyes filled with tears as Marion told them all about it, for in spite of her father’s hardness, and her mother’s weakness, she was still their child and loved her parents dearly.

When Marion told them of poor Sallie, Dollie was terribly grieved. She sympathized so deeply with the girl that she became almost hysterical.

“I suppose that is exactly the way Sile would have treated me if I had married him,” she cried, with her blue eyes blazing. “Oh, Marion, if Sallie had only had a sister like you, she would never have been weak enough to marry Silas!”

“Sallie was a poor, foolish girl,” said Marion, sadly, “and for that very reason Silas abuses her now.”

“I think a girl is a fool to marry a man she doesn’t love,” said Miss Allyn, sharply, “particularly when he has no money and she doesn’t even respect him!”

“So do I,” said Marion, stoutly, “but Sallie did not know any better. She’s just like dozens of other women—she has never done any thinking. Why, Alma, some of the women in the country are a different order of beings from you city women. They think that marrying is the only end and aim of existence.”

“Poor things! I pity them, and I despise them, too,” said Miss Allyn, sadly. “There is no excuse for such reasoning at this stage of the world’s progress. There are so many fields of usefulness for a woman to-day.”

“Well, I am glad that Dollie and I are safely out of the rut,” said Marion, thankfully. “We’ve got a chance to develop and see something of the world before we marry and settle down.”

“Oh, but I’m going to marry some day,” said Dollie, merrily, as she clambered into bed and placed her pretty plump arms above her head. “Ralph says he won’t wait very long after he is able to support me.”

“I’ll have to scold Ralph a little,” said Marion, pinching her sister’s dimpled arm as it lay on the pillow. “He must not be in such a hurry to rob me of my sister, not that I blame him a bit, do you?” she added, laughing.

“Not a bit,” said Miss Allyn, quickly. “I’m half in love with her myself. Still, I’d rather she’d marry a millionaire, and she could do it just as easily. Ralph Moore is all right, but he’s too poor for Dollie.”

“Oh, Miss Allyn!” cried both girls in half serious horror. “Who ever would have dreamed of you harboring such sentiments?”

“Well, I’ve got ’em, and I might as well be honest,” was the answer. “Dollie’s too pretty to have to spend her life in a poor man’s home. I want to see diamonds in her golden hair and fine lace on those white shoulders, and I don’t see why she can’t love a rich man as well as a poor one.”

“If she could it would be all right, and I would agree with you,” said Marion, thoughtfully.

“Well, I’ll never love any one but Ralph,” said Dollie, stoutly, “and I don’t care if he is poor. It just makes me love him still the harder.”

“You are a brave little kitten,” said Marion, smoothing the golden hair, “but what is it, Alma, you look so terribly serious?”

Miss Allyn was just raising her hand to turn off the gas for the girls before going to her own room, but she waited long enough to make a candid statement.

“I know a young man that would make a lovely husband for one of you girls,” she said, slowly. “He’s an only child, and he’s as rich as Crœsus.”

“Who is he?” asked Marion, half rising on her pillow.

Miss Allyn turned off the gas before she answered.

“His name is Reginald Brookes, and he is a medical student. He’s exactly the kind of a man you should marry.”