There was only one point that the policeman failed to make clear to Eleanor and Madge. He neglected to tell them that elevated trains, as well as other cars, travel both up and down New York City, and the way to discover which way the "L" train is moving is to consult the signs on the steps that lead up to the elevated road. The policeman supposed that the two young women would make this observation for themselves. Of course, under ordinary circumstances, Madge and Nellie would have been more sensible, but they were frightened and confused at the bare idea of being alone in New York and consequently lost their heads, and they dashed up the Third Avenue elevated steps without looking for signs, settled themselves in the train and were off, as they supposed, for Seventieth Street.
They were too much interested in gazing into upstairs windows, where hundreds of people were at work in tiny, dark rooms, to pay much attention to the first stops at stations that their train made. They knew they were still some distance from Mrs. Curtis's. Madge was completely fascinated at the spectacle of a fat, frowsy woman holding a baby by its skirt on the sill of a six-story tenement house. Just as the car went by the baby made a leap toward the train. Madge smothered her scream as the woman jerked the child out of danger just in time. Then it suddenly occurred to her that this was hardly the kind of neighborhood in which to find Mrs. Curtis's house. The sign at the next stop was a name and not a street number. It could not be possible that she and Eleanor had made another mistake!
Madge hurried back to the end of the car to find the conductor.
"We wish to get out at the nearest station to Seventieth Street and Lexington Avenue," she declared timidly.
The man paid not the slightest attention to her. Madge repeated her question in a somewhat bolder tone.
"You ain't going to get off near Seventieth Street for some time if you keep a-traveling away from it," retorted the conductor crossly. "You've got on a downtown 'L' 'stead of an up. Better change at the next station. You'll find an uptown train across the street," the man ended more kindly, seeing the look of consternation on Madge's white face.