Bobs, a Girl Detective
earning our daily bread.”

“Bread, indeed,” sniffed the disdainful Gwendolyn. “You know that I never eat such a plebian thing as bread.”

“Well, you may work to earn cake if you prefer,” Bobs told her, then leaning forward she added eagerly: “I say, Gloria, it’s going to be a great adventure, isn’t it? I’ve always been so envious of people who actually earned their own way in the world. It shows there is something in them. Anyone can be a parasite, but the person who is worth while isn’t contented to be one. Ever since Kathryn De Laney went to little old New York town to take a course in nursing that she might do something big in the world, I’ve had the itch to do likewise. Getting up at noon and then dwaddling away the hours until midnight is all very well for those who like it, but not for mine! I’ve been wishing that something would jar us out of the rut we’re in, and I, for one, am glad that it has come.”

“Kathryn De Laney is a disgrace to her family.” This, scornfully, from Gwen. “A girl with a million in her own name could hire people to do all the nursing she wished done without going into dirty, slummy places herself, and actually waiting on immigrants, the very sight of whom would make me feel ill. I never even permit Hawkins to drive me through the poorer sections of the city and, if I am obliged to pass through the tenement district, I close the windows that I need not breath the polluted air; and I also draw the curtains.”

“I’ve no doubt that you do,” Bobs said, eyeing her sister almost coldly. “I sometimes wonder where our mother got you, anyway. You haven’t one resemblance to that dear little woman who, when the squalid hamlet down by the sound was burned, opened her home and took them all in. We were too small to remember it ourselves, but I’ve heard Father tell about it time and again, and he would always end the story by saying, ‘My dearest wish is that my four girls each grow up to be just such an angel woman as their mother was.’”

“Nor was that all,” Lena May put in, a tender light glowing in her soft brown eyes. “Mother herself superintended the rebuilding of the hamlet which has now grown to be the model town along the sound.” Then, looking lovingly up at the oldest sister, she continued: “I’m glad, Gloria, that you are so like our mother. But you haven’t as yet told me your plan and I am sure that you must at least have the beginning of one.”

“Well, as I said before, we must leave here and go to work,” Gloria replied. “I suppose the best thing would 
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