"Pooh! As if that was anything compared ter what you does fur me," scoffed Patty. "'Sides, don't I git pay--money, fur bein' matron?" In New York Margaret went immediately to a quiet, but conveniently located hotel, where the rooms she had engaged were waiting for them. To Patty even this unpretentious hostelry was palatial, as were the service and the dinner in the great dining-room that evening. "I don't wonder folks likes ter be rich," she observed after a silent survey of the merry, well-dressed throng about her. "I s'pose mebbe Mis' Magoon'd say this was worse than them autymobiles she hates ter see so; an' it don't look quite--fair; does it? I wonder now, do ye s'pose any one of 'em ever thought of--divvyin' up?" A dreamy, far-away look came into the blue eyes opposite. "Perhaps! who knows?" murmured Margaret. "Still, _they_ haven't ever--crossed the line, perhaps, so they don't--_know_." "Huh?" Margaret smiled. "Nothing, Patty. I only meant that they hadn't lived in Mrs. Whalen's kitchen and kept all their wealth in a tin cup." "No, they hain't," said Patty, her eyes on the sparkle of a diamond on the plump white finger of a woman near by. Margaret and Patty lost no time the next morning in beginning their search for the twins. There was very little, after all, that Patty knew of her sisters since she had last seen them; but that little was treasured and analyzed and carefully weighed. The twins were at the Whalens' when last heard from. The Whalens, therefore, must be the first ones to be looked up; and to the Whalens--as represented by the address in Clarabella's last letter--the searchers proposed immediately to go. "An' ter think that you was bein' looked fur jest like this once," remarked Patty, as they turned the corner of a narrow, dingy street. "Poor dear mother! how she must have suffered," murmured Margaret, her eyes shrinking from the squalor and misery all about them. "I think perhaps never until now did I realize it--quite," she added softly, her eyes moist with tears. "Ye see the Whalens ain't whar they was when you left 'em in that nice place you got fur 'em," began Patty, after a moment, consulting the paper in her hand. "They couldn't keep that, 'course; but Clarabella wrote they wa'n't more'n one or two blocks from the Alley." "The Alley! Oh, how I should love to see the Alley!" cried Margaret. "And we will, Patty; we'll go there surely before we return home. But first we'll find the Whalens and the twins."