CHAPTER VIII.

A PROPHECY CAME TRUE.

“Well, if you are not a sly one,” remarked Miss Allyn, as soon as she and Marion were alone in the little parlor.

Marion indulged in a hearty laugh before she told her how she had met young Brookes and his mother on the train the day she came back from the country.

“Will you take my advice and marry him if he asks you,” said Miss Allyn, shortly. “There are not many men like Reginald Brookes, Marion, I can tell you.”

“Is he better than Mr. Ray?” asked Marion, jokingly. “I have been trying to answer that question for myself all the evening.”

“Poor Mr. Ray! His chances are fading,” said Miss Allyn, smiling. “Well, it wouldn’t be fair to the absent to praise his rival, so I’ll decline the responsibility of answering your question.”

“That’s just like you, Alma,” said Marion, soberly. “You are the most loyal woman that I ever met or heard of.”

“Well, I know another that answers to that description,” said Miss Allyn, quickly. “Do you want to see her?”

She grasped Marion by the shoulders and whirled her around so that she faced the mirror directly over the mantel.

Marion blushed and was about to speak, when Dollie tapped on the door. Her lover, Ralph Moore, was with her and begged the girls to let him come in a minute.

“Come right in, Brother Ralph,” said Marion, teasingly. “Come in and see Dollie’s new home, and I’ll introduce you to Miss Allyn.”

Ralph Moore was a handsome fellow, with charming manners, and since his engagement to Dollie he was just like a big brother to Marion.

“It’s very pretty,” he said, admiringly. “I hope I’ll soon be able to furnish as pretty a one for Dollie.”

“What, and take her away from me?” asked Miss Allyn, quickly. “Well, that settles it, Mr. Moore. You can consider me your sworn enemy.”

“Oh, you’ll have to live with us,” retorted Dollie. “We’ll take a bigger flat and all live together.”

“No, thanks,” said Miss Allyn, laughing; “none of that for me. Do you suppose I could stand it to see you forever spooning?”

After a laugh at this remark, Mr. Moore took his departure, boldly kissing his sweetheart in the tenderest manner.

“Good-by, Ralph,” said Marion. “I will not see you again. I have an engagement to-morrow night, and Monday I go to the Island.”

“Well, good luck, Sister Marion,” said Ralph, taking her hand; then he turned toward Dollie with a pleading expression.

“Yes, you can kiss her, seeing it’s Marion,” said Dollie, laughing, “but just look out for yourself, sir. If I ever catch you kissing any other girl, why, I’d just scratch your eyes out, even if I do love you.”

“I won’t take any chances,” said Ralph, in mock terror; then he kissed Marion good-by and said good night to Miss Allyn.

“A mighty fine fellow,” was Miss Allyn’s comment.

“A noble young man,” was Marion’s answer. “We can never forget how loyally he has defended us.”

Miss Allyn knew what she meant, and nodded her head. She had heard the story of Ralph Moore’s strange deed, how he had appropriated a jewel from his aunt and pawned it to keep the girls from starvation.

“I’d trust a man like that anywhere,” she said, slowly, “for no matter what he did, no one would suffer by it; he would look at both sides of a brook before he jumped it.”

The girls were soon in bed and sound asleep. They had had a tiresome day, but would have been absolutely happy had not the unfaithfulness of Miss Allyn’s lover cast a cloud upon their thoughts.

Early Monday morning Marion said good-by to her friend and to her sister, for Miss Allyn and Dollie were going down town together, as it was Dollie’s first day of service as a typewriter.

At ten o’clock Marion started out. Her boat left at eleven from the East Twenty-sixth street dock, and she had a permit in her pocket which the clerk at Charity Hospital had sent her.

It was to be a strange experience, and Marion trembled a little. Some way she dreaded to see the sights that she was about to encounter.

“There are prisoners and crazy people of all kinds up there,” she whispered to herself. “I just dread to face such misery, and yet some one has to do it.”

She had packed her little trunk and sent it on before her, so now she had nothing but a handbag to carry, and she quite enjoyed the ride from Harlem in the elevated train.

Marion had just reached the street from the elevated station, when the sharp clang of a bell startled her from her reflections.

There was a large group of people about half way down the block, and in an instant an ambulance came dashing around the corner.

“A woman either sick or drunk,” said somebody near her.

Marion walked along slowly, so as not to get in the crowd which, like all New York crowds, seemed to spring right up through the sidewalk.

“Get out of the way there, will you!” shouted a burly policeman, as he rushed up. “Stand back there and give the doctor a chance. Move on, I say, or I’ll club the heads off’n you!”

Marion shrank back a little, but she was the only one. The others swarmed about the ambulance as though the officer had not spoken.

In the twinkling of an eye the ambulance swung around and a physician in uniform sprang to the curbing.

The crowd fell back a little when the officer resorted to vigorous measures, and the next moment Marion caught sight of a woman lying on the sidewalk, with her head actually falling over the curb into the gutter.

“Run out the stretcher,” ordered the physician as another officer arrived on the scene. He picked the woman up bodily and laid her on the floor of the ambulance, which was fitted with a mattress and blankets.

A break in the crowd enabled her to see clearly. In a second she was staring hard, her breath almost choking her.

There was something familiar about the woman’s dress, which was of a plain, dark homespun, so common in the country.

The next moment Marion had pressed forward until she obtained a clear view of the poor creature’s face, and then a cry burst from her lips that made the crowd stare at her.

“It is Sallie—Sallie Green!” she cried hysterically.

The ambulance bell clanged and there was a swaying of the crowd. Before she could collect her senses the ambulance dashed off, carrying Silas Johnson’s wretched wife to a cot in Bellevue Hospital.

Sallie had kept her word—she had “run away to the big city.”