CHAPTER II
A PROBLEM TO SOLVE
A boy with a pair of crutches beside him sat on the steps of the apartment house where Carolyn May lived.
"'Lo, Carolyn May!" he said when the greatly, excited little girl and the mongrel dog arrived, "Your Pop's got home."
"Oh, Johnny O'Harrity, I am so glad!" she said with relief. "I'd most forgotten this was his night for getting home early. So much has happened this afternoon," and she sighed ecstatically.
"There's always something happening to you, Carolyn May, let you tell it," said the janitor's boy, enviously. "What is it now?"
"Oh, I couldn't stop to tell you all, Johnny," declared the little girl, slipping Prince's leash and letting him free to scramble up the steps. "Just the won-derfulest thing happened—"
"Aw, pshaw!" scoffed the boy, unwilling to admit that a mere girl could fall upon Adventure so easily. "Like my grandmother says, you're always taking mice for monsters."
"I'm not either!" gasped the little girl. "You are an awfully impolite boy to say so—and I don't like mice! You just look at that, Johnny O'Harrity!" and she thrust her hand clutching the twenty dollar bill under his freckled nose. "What would you say if a man just gave you that and you didn't know who it belonged to? So there!"
She refolded the banknote and marched into the house with her head in the air, leaving Johnny O'Harrity speechless. The possession of a bill of such large denomination was too tangible evidence of "just the won-derfulest thing" having happened for the young sceptic to doubt longer. Visions of a wealth of ice-cream cones, lollipops and all-day suckers danced in the lame boy's mental vision.
"Aw, Carolyn, I didn't mean to make you mad!" he cried after her. "I was only foolin'."
But Carolyn May went on without reply. Perhaps she had reason to suspect Johnny O'Harrity's disingenuousness.
Prince was whining at the apartment door when she reached the top of the two flights of stairs in the semi-lighted stairwell. She put a dimpled finger on the annunciator button, and at once a muffled step approached along the private hall of the Cameron apartment. It wasn't mother's light and busy step, so Carolyn May shrank back beside the doorframe and clapped a pink palm upon her mouth to smother the giggles that immediately arose to her lips.
The door opened. A man in his shirtsleeves, with a beard and twinkling blue eyes, appeared in the opening. He peered sharply into the hall and seemed not to recognize the small figure in the tam-o'-shanter, although Prince slipped in between his legs with a joyful snuffle and made his way kitchenward, from which direction certain delightful odours proclaimed that dinner was in preparation.
"How do you do, little girl?" said the man. "Did you wish to see anybody in particular?"
"Does—does Miss Carolyn May Cameron live here?" asked the little girl, struggling to keep down the giggles.
"Why, yes. She does live here—when she's at home," admitted the man doubtfully. "But she isn't at home much."
"When is she home the most?" asked Carolyn May, "for I'd like to see her, please."
"She's home the most when she's out the least," declared Mr. Cameron. "Almost always she seems to be out when her papa comes home for his once-a-week dinner."
"Oh, Papa!"
"Oh, Snuggy!"
So the make-believe ended as she flung herself into his arms and he caught her up bodily and hugged her—oh, so tightly!—to his breast.
"It will be hard sledding, as your Uncle Joe would say, Snuggy, when you are too big for me to pick up this way," he declared, bearing her off to the front room, there to reseat himself in an arm-chair and hold her on his lap.
"Shall I ever be as big as that?" Carolyn asked, rather seriously.
Her father laughed, and then Carolyn May suddenly remembered her "won-derfulest" happening.
"See here, Papa Cameron!" she cried, and opened her hand to reveal the twenty dollar bill.
"'Pitcher of George Washington!' as your friend, Tim the hackman, says," cried her father, with dancing eyes. "Is there really so much money in this work-a-day world? Twenty whole dollars? My!"
"Oh," said Carolyn May, dimpling, "the man who gave it to me must have lots more than this. He was an awfully rich looking man."
"And he gave it to you?" questioned her father, his curiosity excited.
"Oh, yes, Papa. For a friend of mine. She's a pale lady, and the baby's just as sweet! But he's awfully skinny. I should think she would have choosed a fatter baby. And the man gave me this money for her because he didn't run over the baby," went on Carolyn May with absolute indifference to her persons and tenses. But Mr. Cameron was used to what he called the little girl's "fearlessness in the use of the English language." She was bound by few hard-and-fast rules of grammar.
"Yes. I should think that would have pleased him quite twenty dollars' worth," agreed Mr. Cameron. "But now suppose you tell me all about it, Snuggy, from the very start. I think likely I shall get a clearer idea of how my little girl became possessed of so much wealth."
So Carolyn May went back to the pale lady and her baby on the bench in the park, and how she and Prince had made their acquaintance. The resultant adventure when the pale lady had wrecked her baby's go-cart reminded Papa Cameron of the perils confronting his little daughter whenever she went out on the streets.
"It was a narrow escape," he said with a sigh. "I hope you, Snuggy, are just as careful as you can be when you come to a crossing?"
"Oh, yes, I am!" she cried. "And so is Princey. He barks if he sees anything coming. And he grabbed the pale lady's skirt with his teeth. But now, Papa Cameron, how shall I find her and give her this money for a new baby carriage?"
That was a question which was the text for much discussion around the dinner table. Mamma Cameron was quite as deeply interested in the problem as her husband and her little daughter. Mamma Cameron was a very sweet looking woman, and a single glance was all one needed to be assured that Carolyn May was her daughter.
"The poor woman doubtless needs that twenty dollars, Lewis," she said to Carolyn's father. "How careless people with plenty of money sometimes are!"
"Careless in giving away money to small girls, Hannah?" asked Mr. Cameron quizzically; "or careless in running their cars?"
"Careless in thinking that the giving of twenty dollars in this case absolves them from all responsibility. It would seem as if that man did not care whether the money ever reached the woman or not. He considered his conscience salved."
"Perhaps you are right, my dear," rejoined Mr. Cameron. "The more reason, then, why we should carry through his good intention. We must find the pale lady."
"Of course we must!" cried Carolyn May with enthusiasm. "Shall we put an advertisement in your paper?"
"'Advertising pays'—we are agreed on that," said her father, smiling. "But in this case we may assume that a less bald method of publicity had better be tried first. Did you never see the pale lady in the park before, Snuggy?"
"No, Papa, never before. But, then, she might come there often just the same. You know, Princey and I don't often go there in the afternoon."
"Perhaps you and Mamma can go tomorrow and look for her," Mr. Cameron suggested. "She cannot live far away, or she would not have been sitting in that particular quarter of Central Park. And we may assume, also, that her home is in an easterly direction, as that was the way she was going when the automobile literally crossed her path."
"I wonder who the people were in the auto, Lewis," said Mrs. Cameron.
"It is not likely that we shall learn that," her husband replied. "But Carolyn's friend, the pale lady, we must find.
"Carolyn's suggestion of advertising in the paper may not be far out of the way," he pursued. "A personal, advising the pale lady to communicate with the advertiser, and mentioning the incident and the fact that she will learn something to her financial advantage, would possibly attract her attention. We'll see about that later."
"Maybe we'll have to send for Uncle Joe Stagg to find her," put in Carolyn May excitedly. "You know, he found Miss Mandy and me when the whole forest was burning up, and brought us safe back to the Corners."[1]
"It shocks me," her mother said, with a sigh, "to remember what dangers the child experienced while we were away, Lewis. Sometimes I feel that I cannot bear to have her out of my sight again."
"Yes, our Snuggy has experienced perils by flood and fire with a vengeance. I had no idea, Hannah," he went on, "that my assignment to an Italian post for the Beacon was to result in so much excitement and adventure for Carolyn May. When our reported loss with the Dunraven seemed a fact, of course there was nothing for Mr. Price to do but to send Snuggy to your brother."
Carolyn May was busy with her dinner and her own particular thoughts. Her parents could speak freely before her at the moment.
"I believe her going to the Corners was the making of Joseph Stagg," said Mrs. Cameron thoughtfully.
"At least, it was his making over," her husband rejoined, with a boylike grin.
"He had been a business automaton almost, it seems to me, since I could remember," said Hannah Cameron. "Now, how he has changed!"
"I fancy," said Carolyn May's father, with a little smile, "that Miss Amanda Parlow, 'that was,' as the Corner folks say, has had something to do with the metamorphosis of Joe Stagg."
"But Carolyn began it. Joseph Stagg would never have awakened and married Mandy if it had not been for our child. Never! Even Aunty Rose Kennedy says that."
"She certainly is a wonderful little matchmaker," chuckled the man. "They have much to thank her for, Hannah. No wonder they are so eager to have you and the child spend a part of the summer at Sunrise Cove and the Corners.
"But, now! about this twenty dollar bill, and the pale lady. Will you be able to give some time to it, Hannah?"
"I certainly will try, Lewis. But I do not think Carolyn May should carry that money about herself."
Mr. Cameron tapped his breast pocket. "It is in my wallet right now," he said. "Let the pale lady be found and we will soon put the money into her hands. Still, the responsibility lies heavily upon the Cameron family until the actual owner of the twenty dollar note comes to light."
"Of course we shall find her, Papa," Carolyn May said with assurance. "Princey and I and mamma are sure to meet the pale lady. And mamma will just love her I know. She is a very, very nice lady."
"And that is also her opinion of Bridget Dorgan who comes to do the scrubbing and smells of beer," sighed Mrs. Cameron aside. "Sometimes I really think, Lewis, that Carolyn May's taste in friendships is altogether too catholic."
Her husband merely chuckled.