Dorothy thought this a very strange story--too strange for her to draw reasonable conclusions from.
“Mrs. Pangborn is always in her office at this hour,” she told Miette. “Come at once. We will feel better to have her motherly advice.”
Mrs. Pangborn listened first to Dorothy, and then to Miette. That the little French girl had been abandoned by her relatives, as Miette claimed, was hard to believe, but it was also a fact that Mrs. Pangborn had received no reply to a letter she had written to the address of Miette’s guardian. In her story all the wrongs that Miette had been trying in the past so assiduously to hide were now poured out in a frenzy of indignation. She declared her aunt had brought her out to Glenwood “to get rid of her,” and that all her mother’s money had been stolen by this relative. She repeated the wrong she was made to endure while acting as “cash girl” in a New York department store, and declared that “only for Marie, she would have died.”
“And now it is Dorothy who helps me,” finished the girl, “and if she had not so insisted on being my friend I should have run right away--why should I stay here now? Where shall I go after the term is finished? I must at once let my own aunt in France know how these people in America have treated me!”
“But, my dear,” counseled Mrs. Pangborn, “we must wait. You are not at all sure that your aunt has gone away. And if she has, you need not worry--we can take care of you nicely until some of your other relatives come.”
“But my money!” wailed Miette, “they have it all!”
“Perhaps it is all safely put away for you,” replied Mrs. Pangborn. “You must not be too quick to judge.”
“But they made me work, and I knew it was my money that bought all the new things.”
“Well, my dear, you must try now to be calm, and we will attend to all your troubles at once. I am sorry you did not trust me before--”
“But I dared not tell,” insisted Miette. “My aunt particularly said I should go to some awful place if I told. And that is why I should not have written the note to Marie. But I do so love Marie.”
When Miette left the office Dorothy stayed to speak alone with Mrs. Pangborn.
“I would like,” said Dorothy, “to take a little trip down to North Birchland. I need to see my aunt about--”