The girls thanked him again, and then hurried indoors.
"Where _have_ you been so late, dears?" cried Anne, anxiously, as they came in.
"We told you we would be late," began Polly.
"But it is past twelve, now; I was about to call up the police-station at Ninth street, and find out if anything had happened."
The two girls laughed and Eleanor pulled Anne's ear playfully, as she said: "Now, silly, what could happen to us!"
Anne never suspected that Polly and Eleanor had had a "hold-up" at any time, but she wondered why Mr. Dalken should be so kind as to loan his car to the girls on school-nights. Polly explained simply. "Why, he never forgot what we did for Elizabeth, and when he learned we were trudging back and forth alone, he just wouldn't have it."
"He said he couldn't bear the thought of our even having to travel in the subway, alone, late at night," added Eleanor.
So Anne, although she read about the two ruffians who had tried to rob a wealthy broker, one night, never dreamed that _her_ two girls were victimized before Mr. Dalken appeared to rescue them.
Madam Wellington's school prospered splendidly from the publicity given it in the papers directly after the fire. And later, when it was learned that Mr. Ashby, Mr. Dalken, and two other wealthy men had purchased the corner which had always been disfigured by the old four-story amusement hall, and proposed erecting a twelve-story high-class apartment house on the land, the mention of the fire and the bravery of the Wellington School girls again appeared in the papers.
Letters between Pebbly Pit and New York passed twice a week, and the last news from home was: "How we should love to have you spend Christmas with us, Polly dearest. It will not seem like a real Christmas with both my children away from home."
The letter made Polly feel home-sick and she wrote to her mother immediately, saying: "I feel that I shall have to come home even if it takes a month out of school and delays me in my art studies, unless you can plan some other way that we might see each other this Christmas."
Polly had a very clever plan that suddenly came to her, as she read her mother's words, and her reply was the first step in working out her plan successfully.