A few days later, dressed in light mourning, Shirley Bloodgood for the
second time in her life wended her way to a certain tenement house not
far from the East River.
"Surely I cannot be mistaken,--this must be the place," she told
herself, groaning in spirit.
In reply to her timid knock and inquiry for Mrs. Challoner, a little
girl directed her to the apartment above, the door of which was
presently opened by a woman with full rounded face; and entering a neat,
well-furnished, five-room flat, Shirley was soon seated at the window
chatting with happy eagerness.
The young woman with the full, fresh, rounded face, it can readily be
imagined, was Miriam Challoner.
"You've been away more than three years, Shirley," she sighed, as she
bent over a bit of fancy work. "It seems a century almost."
"It hasn't seemed so long to me," returned Shirley. "Though when we
first went west, I thought it would be nothing short of a
nightmare--waiting for an old man to die."
"It must have been," assented Miriam.
Shirley held up her head proudly, and answered:--"No, it wasn't, because
for the first time in my life I really came to know my father. I thought
I had known him long before, but I made a mistake. I never knew him
until these last three years in Arizona--I found out almost too late."
"I always liked your father, Shirley, and I think he always liked me,"
was Miriam's remark.
"Yes, he did. But did you ever stop to think," went on Shirley hastily,
"why, my father never wronged anybody! My father was good--my father was
honest! Oh, I could scourge myself," she declared sadly, "for the things
I used to think about father. I even told Murgatroyd, once, that though
I loved my father, I could never admire him, respect him."