Carolyn of the Corners Part 49

But Carolyn May knew that she was coming home to an empty apartment-to rooms that echoed with her mother's voice and in which lingered only memories of her father's cheery spirit.

Yet it was the only home, she felt, that was left for her.

She could not blame Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda for forgetting her. Aunty Rose had been quite disturbed, too, since the forest fire. She had given the little girl no hint that provision would be made for her future.

Wearily, Carolyn May travelled through the Harlem streets, shifting the bag from hand to hand, Prince pacing sedately by her side.

"We're getting near home now, Princey," she told him again and again.

Thus she tried to keep her heart up. She came to the corner near which she had lived so long, and Prince suddenly sniffed at the screened door of a shop.

"Of course, poor fellow! That's the butcher's," Carolyn May said.

She bought a penny afternoon paper on a newsstand and then went into the shop and got a nickel's worth of bones and sc.r.a.ps for the dog. The clerk did not know her, for he was a new man.

They ventured along their block. The children all seemed strange to Carolyn May. But people move so frequently in Harlem that this was not at all queer. She hoped to see Edna or some other little girl with whom she had gone to school. But not until she reached the very house itself did anybody hail her.

"Oh, Carolyn May! Is that you?"

A lame boy was looking through the iron fence of the areaway. He was the janitor's son.

"Oh, Johnny! I'm real glad to see you!" cried the little girl. Then she added more slowly: "We-we've come home again-me and Prince."

"You've growed a lot, Carolyn May," said the boy. "My pop and mom's away."

"I'll go up into Edna's flat, then," the weary little girl sighed.

"The Prices have gone away, too. They won't be back till to-morrow some time."

"Oh!" murmured Carolyn May.

"But, say, I can get the keys to your flat. The water's turned on, too.

Everything's all right up there, for Mrs. Price she sweeps and dusts it all every once in a while. Shall I get the keys?"

"Oh, if you will, please!" returned the relieved child.

The boy hobbled away, but soon returned with the outer-door key and the key to the apartment itself. Carolyn May took them and thanked him. Then she gladly went in and climbed the two flights to their floor.

She saw n.o.body, and easily let herself into the flat. It had been recently aired and dusted. Every piece of furniture stood just as she remembered it.

"Oh, Princey, it's _home_!" she whispered. "This is our real, real home!

I-I loved 'em all at The Corners; but it wasn't like _this_ there!"

Prince perhaps agreed, but he was too deeply interested in snuffing at the package of meat sc.r.a.ps she had purchased for his supper to reply.

"Well, well, Prince," she said, "you shall have it at once."

Dropping the bag in the private hall, she went into the kitchen and stood on tiptoe to open the door of the closet above the dresser.

Securing a plate, she emptied the contents of the paper into it, and set the plate down on the floor.

In spreading out the paper she saw some big-type headlines on the front page:

ROMANCE OF THE GREAT WAR

_The Experiences of This Newspaper Man like Those of a Character in a Novel-Lost for Eight Months in the Desert-At the Mercy of Semi-savage Tribes, Man and Wife Escape at Last to Return in Safety and Health._

_His Story Told to Beacon Reporter at Quarantine._

Carolyn May read no further. It did not particularly interest a little girl. Besides, she was very tired-too tired to think of her own supper.

Had she read on, however, even her simple mind might have been startled by the following paragraphs printed below the heading of this startling story:

"Their wonderful good fortune in escaping from the disaster that overtook the steamer on which they travelled and which was caught between the gunfire of a French battleship and two of a Turkish squadron can only be equalled by the chance which followed.

Naturally, as a journalist himself, Mr. Cameron is prepared to tell the details of his remarkable adventure in the columns of the _Beacon_ at a later date.

"The boat in which they left the sinking _Dunraven_ was separated in the night and fog from that of the other refugees and was carried by the current far to the south. In fact, they were enveloped by fog until they landed upon a stretch of deserted beach.

"There was no town near, nor even an encampment of Arabs. But soon after their disembarkation and before the officer in command could take means to communicate with any civilised, or semi-civilised, place a party of mounted and armed tribesmen swooped down on the castaways.

"These people, being Mohammedans, and having seen the battle the day before between the French and the Turks, considered the castaways enemies and swept them away with them into the desert to a certain oasis, where for nearly eight months Mr. John Lewis Cameron and his wife and the other refugees from the _Dunraven_ were kept without being allowed to communicate with their friends.

"Mr. Cameron was on furlough from his paper because of ill-health.

At the beginning of his captivity he was in a very bad way, indeed, it is said. But the months in the hot, dry atmosphere of the desert have made a new man of him, and he personally cannot hold much rancour against the Mohammedan tribe that held him a prisoner."

There was more of the wonderful story, but the sleepy little girl had given it no attention whatsoever. Prince had eaten and lain down in his familiar corner. The little girl had gone softly into her own room and made up her bed as she had seen her mother and Mrs. Price make it.

Then she turned on the water in the bathtub and took a bath. It was delightful to have a real tub instead of the galvanised bucket they used at Uncle Joe's.

She put on her nightgown at last, knelt and said her prayer, including that pet.i.tion she had never left out of it since that first night she had knelt at Aunty Rose's knee:

"G.o.d bless my papa and mamma and bring them safe home."

The faith that moves mountains was in that prayer.

CHAPTER x.x.x-THE HOUSE OF BEWILDERMENT

Carolyn May slept the sleep of the wearied, if not of the carefree. The noises of the street did not disturb her, not even the pa.s.sing of the fire-department trucks some time after midnight.

Nor did nearer sounds arouse her. She had no knowledge of the fact that a procession of A.D.T. boys and messengers from the railroad company came to ring the bell of the Prices' apartment. Later the janitor's family was aroused, but the little lame boy thought it would be better for him to say nothing about having seen Carolyn May and of having given her the keys.

So when, in the early morning, a taxicab stopped at the street door and a bushy-haired, troubled-looking man got out and helped a woman clad in brown to the sidewalk, the janitor had no knowledge of the fact that Carolyn May and Prince were upstairs in the apartment that had been so long empty.

"And the Prices are away," said Uncle Joe in a troubled voice. "What do you think of that, Mandy?"

"Oh, Joe! where could the dear child have gone?"