"I ain't seen her for four days and nights, that I haven't," declared the woman.

That was all there was to be got out of her. Nan and her friends went away, much troubled. They went again to Mother Beasley's to inquire, with like result. When they told that kind but careworn woman what the child's aunt had said, she shook her head and spoke lugubriously.

"She was probably drunk when she treated the child so. If she destroyed Inez basket and used the money Inez always saved back to buy a new supply of bouquets, she fair put the poor thing out o' business."

"Oh, dear!" said Nan. "And we can't find her on the square."

"Poor thing! I wisht she had come here for a bite—I do. I'd have trusted her for a meal of vittles."

"I am sure you would, Mrs. Beasley," Nan said, and she and her friends went away very much worried over the disappearance of Inez, the flower-seller.



CHAPTER XXIII

JUST TOO LATE

Walter Mason was not only an accommodating escort; he was very much interested in the search for Inez. Even Bess, who seldom admitted the necessity for boys at any time in her scheme of life, admitted on this occasion that she was glad Walter was present.

"That woman, poor little Inez's aunt, would have slapped my face, I guess," she admitted. "Isn't it mean of her to speak so of the child? And she had beaten her! I don't see how you had the courage to face her, Walter."

"I should give him my medal," chuckled Nan. "Where now, Walter?"

"To see that officer," declared the boy.

The trio were again on the square where Inez had told Nan she almost always sold her flowers. Walter came back in a few moments from his interview with the police officer.

"Nothing doing," he reported. "The man says he hasn't seen her for several days, and she was always here."

"I suppose he knows whom we mean?" worried Bess.

"Couldn't be any mistake about that," Walter said. "He is afraid she is sick."

"I'm not," Nan said promptly. "It is just as Mrs. Beasley says. If her aunt took Inez's basket and money away, she is out of business. She's lost her capital. I only hope she is not hungry, poor thing."

"Dear, dear!" joined in Bess. "If she only knew how to come to us! She must know we'd help her."

"She knows where we are staying," Nan said. "Don't you remember I showed her Walter's card?"

"Then why hasn't she been to see us?" cried Bess.

"I guess there are several reasons for that," said sensible Nan.

"Well! I'd like to know what they are," cried her chum. "Surely, she could find her way."

"Oh, yes. Perhaps she didn't want to come. Perhaps she is too proud to beg of us—just beg money, I mean. She is an independent little thing."

"Oh, I know that," admitted Bess.

"But more than likely," Nan pursued, "her reason for not trying to see us was that she was afraid she would not be admitted to the house."

"My gracious!" exclaimed Walter. "I never thought of that."

"Just consider what would happen to a ragged and dirty little child who mounted your steps—even suppose she got that far," Nan said.

"What would happen to her?" demanded the wondering Bess, while Walter looked thoughtful.

"If she got into the street at all (there is always a policeman on fixed post at the corner) one of the men at the house, the butler or the footman, would drive her away.

"You notice that beggars never come through that street. They are a nuisance and wealthy people don't want to see people in rags about their doorsteps. Even the most charitable people are that way, I guess," added Nan.

"Your mother is so generous, Walter, that if beggars had free access to the street and the house, she could never go out of an afternoon without having to push her way through a throng of the poor and diseased to reach her carriage."

"Oh, mercy!" cried Bess.

"I guess that is so," admitted Walter. "You've got mother sized up about right."

"I know it's so," said Nan, quickly. "Do you know, I think your mother, Walter, would have made a good chatelaine of a castle in medieval times. Then charitably inclined ladies were besieged by the poor and miserable at their castle gates. The good lady gave them largess as she stepped into her chariot. Their servants threw silver pennies at a distance so that the unfortunates would scramble for the coins and leave a free passage for miladi.

"In those days," pursued Nan, quite in earnest, "great plagues used to destroy a large portion of the population—sweeping through the castles of the rich as well as the hovels of the poor. That was because the beggars hung so upon the skirts of the rich. Wealth paid for its cruelty to poverty in those days, by suffering epidemics of disease with the poor."

"Goodness, Nan! I never thought of that," said Walter. "What a girl you are."

"She reads everything," said Bess, proudly; "even statistics."

Nan laughed heartily. "I did not get that out of a book of statistics, Bess. But that is why we have so many hospitals and institutions for housing poor and ill people. Society has had to make these provisions for the poor, to protect itself."

"Now you sound like a regular socialist or anarchist or something," said Bess, somewhat vaguely.

"You'd have heard it all before, if you'd listened to some of Dr. Beulah's lectures in the classroom," Nan said. "But we're far off the subject of Inez. I wish we could find her; but there seems no way."

"Oh, Nan! are you sure? Put on your thinking-cap," begged Bess.

"I have thought," her chum replied. "I thought of trying to trace her through the people who sell flowers to her. I asked Mrs. Beasley, and she told me that the flowers Inez sells come from the hotels and big restaurants where they have been on the tables over night. They are sorted and sold cheap to street pedlers like Inez. Hundreds of little ragamuffins buy and hawk these bouquets about the streets. The men who handle the trade would not be likely to remember one little girl.

"Besides," added Nan, smiling sadly. "Inez is a bankrupt. She is out of business altogether. The few pennies she saved back every day—rain or shine, whether she went hungry, or was fed—was her capital; and that her aunt took away. I'm dreadfully worried about the poor thing," concluded Nan, with moist eyes.

She felt so bad about it that she could not bring herself to join the matinee party that had been arranged by Grace for that afternoon. Some of the girls were going to have a box at a musical comedy, with Miss Hagford as chaperon.

Nan did not plead a headache; indeed, she was not given to white lies. She wished to call on the lovely actress whom she had met the day of her adventure in the department store. She wanted to inquire if she had seen or heard anything of the runaways, Sallie and Celia.

"I'd dearly love to go with you," Bess observed. "Just think of your knowing such a famous woman. You have all the luck, Nan Sherwood."

"I'm not sure that it was good fortune that brought me in contact with the lady," Nan returned ruefully.

"Well! it turned out all right, at least," said Bess. "And my escapades never do. I never have any luck. If it rained soup and I was hungry, you know I wouldn't have any spoon."

Nan set forth before the other girls started for the theatre. She knew just how to find the fashionable apartment hotel in which the actress lived, for she and her friends had passed it more than once in the car.

At the desk the clerk telephoned up to the actress' apartment to see if she was in, and would receive Nan. The maid did not understand who Nan was, and was doubtful; but the moment Madam came to the telephone herself and heard Nan's name, she cried:

"Send her up—send her up! She is just the one I want to see."

This greatly excited Nan, for she thought of Sallie and Celia. When she was let out of the elevator on one of the upper floors, the apartment door was open, and Madam herself was holding out a welcoming hand to her, excitedly saying:

"You dear girl! You are as welcome as the flowers in May. Come in and let me talk to you. How surprising, really! I had no thought of seeing you, and yet I desired to—so much."

Nan was drawn gently into the large and beautiful reception room, while the actress was talking. She saw the woman's furs and hat thrown carelessly on a couch, and thought that she must have recently come in, even before Madam said:

"I have just come from an exhausting morning in the studio. Oh, dear! everybody seemed so stupid to-day. There are such days, you know—everything goes wrong, and even the patient camera-man loses his temper.

"Yes, Marie, you may bring the tea tray. I am exhausted; nothing but tea will revive this fainting pilgrim.

"And, my dear!" she added, turning to Nan again, "I have news for you—news of those runaway girls."

"Oh, Madam! Are Sallie and Celia found?" cried Nan. "I want so to make Mrs. Morton happy."

"We-ell," said the actress, with less enthusiasm. "I believe I can give you a trace of them. But, of course, I haven't them shut up in a cage waiting for their parents to come for them," and she laughed.

"It really is an odd occurrence, my dear. At the time I was telling you the other day that those girls could not be working with my company, that is exactly what they were doing."

"Oh!" cried Nan, again.

"Yes, my dear. Just fancy! I only learned of it this very morning. Of course, I give no attention to the extra people, save when they are before the camera. My assistant hires them and usually trains the 'mob' until I want them.

"Now, fancy!" pursued the lovely woman, "there was a girl, named Jennie Albert, whom we had been using quite a good deal, and she fell ill. So she sent two new girls, and as Mr. Gray needed two extras that day, he let them stay without inquiring too closely into their personal affairs.

"Oh, I blame Mr. Gray, and I told him so. I did not see the girls in question until the big scene we put on this morning. Then the company before the camera was too large; the scene was crowded. I began weeding out the awkward ones, as I always do.

"Why, positively, my dear, there are some girls who do not know how to wear a frock, and yet they wish to appear in my films!

"These two girls of whom I speak I cut out at once. I told Mr. Gray never to put them into costume again. Why! sticks and stones have more grace of movement and naturalness than those two poor creatures—positively!" cried the moving picture director, with emphasis.

"Ah, well! I must not excite myself. This is my time for relaxation, and—a second cup of tea!"

Her light laughter jarred a bit on Nan Sherwood's troubled mind.

"To think!" the lovely actress said, continuing, "that it never occurred to my mind that those two awkward misses might be your runaways until I was standing on one side watching the scene as they passed out. One was crying. Of course I am sorry I had to order their discharge, but one must sacrifice much for art," sighed Madam.

"One was crying, and I heard the other call her 'Celia.' And then the crying girl said: 'I can't help it, Sallie. I am discouraged'—or something like that.

"Of course, you understand, my dear, my mind was engaged with far more important matters. My sub-consciousness must have filmed the words, and especially the girls' names. After the scene suited me, it suddenly came back to me that those names were the real names of the runaway girls. They had given Mr. Gray fictitious names, of course. When I sent him out to find them, he was just too late. The girls had left the premises."



CHAPTER XXIV

OTHER PEOPLE'S WORRIES

Nan had written home quite fully about the presentation of the medal. It was the first her father and mother had known of the courage she had displayed so many weeks before in saving the life of the tiny girl at the Junction.

The fact that some of her fellow passengers had seen the act and considered it worthy of commemoration, of course, pleased Mr. and Mrs. Sherwood; but that Nan had been in peril herself on the occasion, naturally worried her mother.

"I hope you will not go about seeking other adventures, my dear child," wrote her mother, with gentle raillery. "What with your announcement of the presentation of the medal, and Mrs. Mason's enthusiastic letter, your father and I begin to believe that we have a kind of female knight errant for a daughter. I am afraid we never shall get our little Nan back again."

Nan did not really need any bubble of self-importance pricked in this way. She was humbly thankful to have been able to save the little girl from the snake, and that the horrid creature had not harmed her, either.

She had hidden the medal away, and would not display it or talk about it. The thought that her name and her exploit were on the Roll of Honor of the National Society actually made Nan's ears burn.

She had other worries during these brief winter days—mostly other people's worries, however. The absolute disappearance of Inez was one; another was the whereabouts of the two runaway girls, Sallie and Celia, who should by this time have discovered that they were not destined to be great motion picture actresses.

Nan had come away from the apartment of her friend, "the Moving Picture Queen," as Walter called her, that afternoon, with the address of the studio and a letter to Madam's assistant, Mr. Gray. The next morning, she and Bess went to the studio to make inquiries about the runaway girls. They went alone because Grace had much to do before returning to school; and now their day of departure for Lakeview was close at hand.

"And oh! how I hate to go back to those horrid studies again," groaned Bess.

Nan laughed. "What a ridiculous girl you are, Bess Harley," she said. "You were just crazy to go to Lakeview in the first place."

"Yes! wasn't I?" interposed Bess, gloomily. "But I didn't know I was crazy."

When once the chums came to the motion picture studio they had no thought for anything but their errand and the interesting things they saw on every side. At a high grilled gate a man let them into the courtyard after a glance at the outside of the letter Nan carried.

"You'll find Mr. Gray inside somewhere," said the gatekeeper. "You'll have to look for him."

Nan and Bess were timid, and they hesitated for some moments in the paved yard, uncertain which of the several doors to enter. They saw a number of girls and men enter through the gate as they had, and watched the men hurry to one door, and the women and girls to another.

"Lets follow those girls," suggested Bess, as a chattering trio went into the building. "We can't go far wrong, for the sheep and the goats seem to be separated," and she giggled.

"Meaning the men from the women?" said Nan. "I guess those doors lead to the dressing rooms."

She was right in this, for when the two friends stepped doubtfully into a long, high, white-plastered passage, which was quite empty, but out of which many doors opened, they heard a confusion of conversation and laughter from somewhere near.

"What are you going to do?" asked Bess, at once—and as usual—shifting all responsibility to her chum's shoulders. "Knock at all the doors, one after the other, until we find somebody who will direct us further?"

"Maybe that would not be a bad idea, Bess," Nan returned. "But—"

Just then a door opened and the confusion of voices burst on the visitors' ears with startling directness. A girl, dressed as a Gypsy, gaudy of raiment and bejeweled with brilliantly colored glass beads, almost ran the chums down as she tried to pull the door to behind her. The girl's face was painted with heavy shadows and much white, and so oddly that it looked almost like the make-up for a clown's part.

"Hello, kids. Going in here?" she asked pleasantly enough, refraining from closing the door entirely.

Nan and Bess obtained a good view of the noisy room. It was lighted by high windows and a skylight. There were rows of lockers for the girls' clothes along the blank wall of the room. Through the middle and along the sides were long tables and stools. The tables were divided into sections, each of which had its own make-up and toilet outfit.

A mature woman was going about, re-touching many of the girl's faces and scolding them, as Nan and Bess could hear, for not putting on the grease paint thick enough.

"That nasty stuff!" gasped Bess, in Nan's ear. "I wouldn't want to put it on my face."

Right then and there Bess lost all her desire for posing for the moving picture screen. Nan paid little attention to her, but ran after the girl who was hurrying through the passage toward the rear of the great building.

"Oh, wait, please!" cried Nan. "I want to find Mr. Gray—and I know he can't be in that dressing-room."

"Gray? I should say not," and the girl in costume laughed. Then she saw the letter in Nan's hand. "Is that for Gray?"

"Yes," Nan replied.

"Come along then. I expect he's been waiting for me for half an hour now—and believe me, he's just as kind and considerate as a wild bull when we keep him waiting. I overslept this morning."

It was then after ten o'clock, and Nan wondered how one could "oversleep" so late.

"I'm only glad Madam isn't going to be here this morning. By the way," the girl added, curiously, "who's your letter from? You and your friend trying to break into the movies?"

"My goodness, no!" gasped Nan. "I have no desire to act—and I'm sure I have no ability."

"It might be fun," Bess said doubtfully. "But do you all have to paint up so awfully?"

"Yes. That's so we will look right on the screen. Here! that's Gray—the bald-headed man in the brown suit. I hope you have better luck than two girls from the country who were in here for a couple of days. Gray bounced them yesterday. Who's your letter from?" added the girl, evidently disbelieving what both Nan and Bess had said when they denied haying any desire to pose for the screen.

"Madam, herself," said Nan, demurely. "Do you think Mr. Gray will give me a hearing?"

"Well, I guess yes," cried the girl in costume. "Oh, do give it to him just as he starts in laying me out, will you?"

"Anything to oblige," Nan said, smiling. "Can we go right over and speak to him?"

"After me," whispered the girl. "Don't get into any of the 'sets,' or you'll get a call-down, too."

They had entered an enormous room, half circular in shape, with the roof and the "flat" side mostly glass. There were countless screens to graduate the light, and that light was all directed toward the several small, slightly raised stages, built in rotation along the curved wall of the studio.

Each of these stages had its own "set" of scenery and was arranged for scenes. On two, action of scenes was taking place while the energetic directors were endeavoring to get out of their people the pantomimic representation of the scenario each had in charge.

One director suddenly clapped his hands and shouted.

"Get this, John! All ready! You dude and cowboy start that scene now. Be sure you run on at the right cue, Miss Legget. Now, John! Ready boys?"

The representation of a tussle between a cowboy and an exquisitely dressed Eastern youth, in which comedy bit the so-called dude disarmed the Westerner and drove him into a corner till his sweetheart bursts in to protect him from the "wild Easterner," went to a glorious finish.

The camera clicked steadily, the man working it occasionally calling out the number of feet of blank film left on the spool so that the director might know whether to hasten or retard the action of the picture.

Nan and Bess stopped, as they were warned by the girl dressed in Gypsy costume, and watched the proceedings eagerly. Just as the scene came to an end the bald man in the brown suit strode over to the three girls.

"What do you mean by keeping me waiting, Miss Penny?" he demanded in a tone that made Bess shrink away and tremble. "Your scene has been set an hour. I want—Humph! what do these girls want? Did you bring them in?"

Miss Penny poked Nan sharply in the ribs with her elbow. "Show him the letter," she whispered. Adding aloud: "Oh, I brought them in, Mr. Gray. That's what delayed me. When I saw they had a letter for you—"

"For me?" snorted the director, and took doubtfully enough the epistle Nan held out to him. But when he sighted the superscription he tore it open with an exclamation of impatient surprise.

"Now, what does Madam want?" he muttered, and those few words revealed to Nan Sherwood what she had suspected to be the fact about the director—that she was a very exacting task-mistress.

Miss Penny, nodding slily to Nan and Bess, slipped away to the stage on which the Gypsy camp was set, and around which several men in brigandish looking costumes were lounging.

"What's this you young ladies want of me?" asked the director, rather puzzled, it seemed, after reading the note. "All she writes is to recommend Miss Sherwood to my attention and then includes a lot of instructions for to-morrow's work." He smiled sourly. "She is not explicit. Do you want work?"

"Oh, mercy me! no!" cried Nan.

"I should say not!" murmured Bess.

The director's worried, querulous face showed relief. He listened attentively while Nan explained about the runaways. She likewise repeated the actress' version of the discharging of the girls whom she had afterward identified as the two for whom Nan and Bess were in search.

"Yes, yes! I remember. And Madam was quite right in that instance," grudgingly admitted the director. He drew a notebook from his pocket and fluttered the leaves. "Yes. Here are their names crossed off my list. 'Lola Montague' and 'Marie Fortesque.' I fancy," said Mr. Gray, chuckling, "they expected to see those names on the bills."

"But, oh, Mr. Gray!" cried Nan Sherwood, feeling in no mood for laughing at silly Sallie Morton and Celia Snubbins. "Don't you know where they live—those two poor girls?"

"Why—no. They were extras and we get plenty of such people," said the director, carelessly. "Now, the girl who sent them is as daring a girl as I ever saw. I'm sorry she's hurt, or sick, or something, for although Jenny Albert has little 'film charm,' as we call it, she is useful—

"There!" suddenly broke off Mr. Gray. "You might try Jenny's address. She sent those girls here. She probably knows where they live."

He hastily wrote down the street and number on a card and handed it to Nan. "Sorry. That's the best I can do for you, Miss Sherwood."

He turned away, taking up his own particular worries again.

"And, goodness me, Nan!" sighed Bess, as they went out of the cluttered studio, back through the passage, and so into the courtyard and the street again. "Goodness me! I think we have the greatest lot of other people's worries on our shoulders that I ever heard of. We seem to collect other folk's troubles. How do we manage it?"



CHAPTER XXV

RUNAWAYS OF A DIFFERENT KIND

The chums, on leaving the moving picture studio, stopped to read more carefully the card Mr. Gray, the director, had given them. The street on which Jennie Albert lived was quite unknown to Nan and Bess and they did not know how to find it.

Besides, Nan remembered that Mrs. Mason trusted her to go to the moving picture studio, and to return without venturing into any strange part of the town.

"Of course," groaned Bess, "we shall have to go back and ask her."

"Walter will find the place for us," Nan said cheerfully.

"Oh—Walter! I hate to depend so on a boy."

"You're a ridiculous girl," laughed her chum. "What does it matter whom we depend upon? We must have somebody's help in every little thing in this world, I guess."

"Our sex depends too much upon the other sex," repeated Elizabeth, primly, but with dancing eyes.

"Votes for Women!" chuckled Nan. "You are ripe for the suffragist platform, Bessie. I listened to that friend of Mrs. Mason's talking the other day, too. She is a lovely lady, and I believe the world will be better—in time—if women vote. It is growing better, anyway.

"She told a funny story about a dear old lady who was quite converted to the cause until she learned that to obtain the right to vote in the first place, women must depend upon the men to give it to them. So, to be consistent, the old lady said she must refuse to accept anything at the hands of the other sex—the vote included!"

"There!" cried Bess, suddenly. "Talk about angels—"

"And you hear their sleighbells," finished Nan. "Hi, Walter! Hi!"

They had come out upon the boulevard, and approaching along the snow-covered driveway was Walter Mason's spirited black horse and Walter driving in his roomy cutter.

The horse was a pacer and he came up the drive with that rolling action peculiar to his kind, but which takes one over the road very rapidly. A white fleck of foam spotted the pacer's shiny chest. He was sleek and handsome, but with his rolling, unblinded eyes and his red nostrils, he looked ready to bolt at any moment.

Walter, however, had never had an accident with Prince and had been familiar with the horse from the time it was broken to harness. Mr. Mason was quite proud of his son's horsemanship.

Walter saw Nan as she leaped over the windrow of heaped up snow into the roadway, and with a word brought Prince to a stop without going far beyond the two girls. There he circled about and came back to the side of the driveway where Nan and Bess awaited him.

"Hop in, girls. There's room for two more, all right," cried Walter. "I'll sit between you. One get in one side—the other on t'other. 'Round here, Nan—that's it! Now pull the robe up and tuck it in—sit on it. Prince wants to travel to-day. We'll have a nice ride."

"Oh-o-o!" gasped Bess, as they started. "Not too fast, Walter."

"I won't throw the clutch into high-gear," promised Walter, laughing. "Look out for the flying ice, girls. I haven't the screen up, for I want to see what we're about."

Walter wore automobile goggles, and sat on the edge of the seat between the two girls, with his elbows free and feet braced. If another sleigh whizzed past, going in the same direction, Prince's ears went back and he tugged at the bit. He did not like to be passed on the speedway.

Bess quickly lost her timidity—as she always did—and the ride was most enjoyable. When the first exuberance of Prince's spirit had worn off, and he was going along more quietly, the girls told Walter what they had seen and heard at the motion picture studio.

"Great luck!" pronounced the boy. "I'd like to get into one of those places and see 'em make pictures. I've seen 'em on the street; but that's different. It must be great."

"But we didn't find Sallie and Celia there," complained Nan.

"You didn't expect to, did you?" returned the boy. "But I know where that street is. We'll go around there after lunch if mother says we may, and look for that girl who knows them."

"Oh, Bess!"

"Oh, Nan!"

The chums had caught sight of the same thing at the same moment. Just ahead was a heavy sleigh, with plumes on the corner-posts, drawn by two big horses. They could not mistake the turnout. It belonged to the Graves' family with whom Linda Riggs was staying.

The chums had not seen Linda since the evening of the party, when the railroad president's daughter had acted in such an unladylike manner.

"I see the big pung," laughed Walter. "And I bet Linda's in it, all alone in her glory. Pearl told me she hated the thing; but that her grandmother considers it the only winter equipage fit to ride in. You ought to see the old chariot they go out in in summer.

"Hello," he added. "Got to pull up here."

A policeman on horseback had suddenly ridden into the middle of the driveway. Just ahead there was a crossing and along the side road came clanging a hospital ambulance, evidently on an emergency call.

The white-painted truck skidded around the corner, the doctor on the rear step, in his summerish looking white ducks, swinging far out to balance the weight of the car.

The pair of horses drawing the Graves' sleigh, snorted, pulled aside and rose, pawing, on their hind legs. The coachman had not been ready for such a move and he was pitched out on his head.

The girls and Walter heard a shrill scream of terror. The footman left the sleigh in a hurry, too—jumping in a panic. Off the two frightened horses dashed—not up the boulevard, but along the side street.

"That's Linda," gasped Bess.

"And she's alone," added Nan.

"Say! she's going to get all the grandeur she wants in a minute," exclaimed Walter. "Why didn't she jump, too, when she had the chance?"

He turned Prince into the track behind the swaying sleigh. The black horse seemed immediately to scent the chase. He snorted and increased his stride.

"Oh, Walter! Can you catch them?" Nan cried.

"I bet Prince can," the boy replied, between his set teeth.

The policeman on horseback was of course ahead in the chase after the runaways. But the snow on this side road was softer than on the speedway, and it balled under his horse's hoofs.

The black horse driven by Walter Mason was more sure-footed than the policeman's mount. The latter slipped and lost its stride. Prince went past the floundering horse like a flash.

The swaying sleigh was just ahead now. Walter drew Prince to one side so that the cutter would clear the sleigh in passing.

The chums could see poor, frightened Linda crouching in the bottom of the sleigh, clinging with both hands to one of the straps from which the plumes streamed. Her face was white and she looked almost ready to faint.



CHAPTER XXVI

AN UNEXPECTED FIND

The mounted policeman came thundering down the street after them, his horse having regained its footing. The reins of the big steeds were dragging on the ground, and Walter and his girl companions saw no way of getting hold of the lines and so pulling down the frightened horses.

There was another way to save Linda Riggs, however. Walter looked at Nan Sherwood and his lips moved.

"Are you afraid to drive Prince?" he asked.

"No," declared Nan, and reached for the reins. She had held the black horse before. Besides, she had driven her Cousin Tom's pair of big draught horses up in the Michigan woods, and Mr. Henry Sherwood's half-wild roan ponies, as well. Her wrists were strong and supple, and she was alert.

Walter passed the lines over and then kicked the robe out of the way. Bess sat on the left side of the seat, clinging to the rail. She was frightened—but more for the girl in the other sleigh, than because of their own danger.

Walter Mason motioned to Bess to move over to Nan's side. The latter was guiding Prince carefully, and the cutter crept up beside the bigger vehicle. Only a couple of feet separated the two sleighs as Walter leaned out from his own seat and shouted to Linda:

"Look this way! Look! Do exactly as I tell you!"

The girl turned her strained face toward him. The bigger sleigh swerved and almost collided with the cutter.

"Now!" yelled Walter, excitedly. "Let go!"

He had seized Linda by the arm, clinging with his other hand to the rail of the cutter-seat. She screamed—and so did Bess.

But Walter's grasp was strong, and, after all, Linda was not heavy. Her hold was torn from the plume-staff, and she was half lifted, half dragged, into the cutter.

Prince darted past the now laboring runaways. One of the latter slipped on a smooth bit of ice and crashed to the roadway.

His mate went down with him and the sleigh was overturned. Had Linda not been rescued as she was, her injury—perhaps her death—would have been certain.

They stopped at the first drug store and a man held the head of the excited black horse while Walter soothed and blanketed him. Then the boy went inside, and into the prescription room, where Nan and Bess were comforting their schoolmate.

"Oh, dear! oh, dear! I'd have been killed if it hadn't been for you, Walter Mason," cried Linda, for once so thoroughly shaken out of her pose that she acted and spoke naturally. "How can I ever thank you enough?"

"Say!" blurted out Walter. "You'd better thank Nan, here, too. I couldn't have grabbed you if it hadn't been for her. She held Prince and guided the sleigh."

"Oh, that's all right!" interjected Nan, at once very much embarrassed. "Anybody would have done the same."

"'Tisn't so!" cried Bess. "I just held on and squealed."

But Linda's pride was quite broken down. She looked at Nan with her own eyes streaming.

"Oh, Sherwood!" she murmured. "I've said awfully mean things about you. I'm so sorry—I really am."

"Oh, that's all right!" muttered Nan, almost boyish in her confusion.

"Well, I have! I know I made fun of your medal for bravery. You deserve another for what you just did. Oh, dear! I—I never can thank any of you enough;" and she cried again on Bess Harley's shoulder.

Walter telephoned to the Graves' house, telling Linda's aunt of the accident and of Linda's predicament, and when a vehicle was sent for the hysterical girl the boy, with Nan and Bess, hurried home to a late luncheon, behind black Prince.

Although Mrs. Mason, naturally, was disturbed over the risk of accident Walter and the girl chums had taken in rescuing Linda Riggs, the interest of the young folks was in, and all their comment upon, the possible change of heart the purse-proud girl had undergone.

"I don't know about these 'last hour conversions,'" said the pessimistic Bess. "I should wring the tears out of the shoulder of my coat and bottle 'em. Only tears I ever heard of Linda's shedding! And they may prove to be crocodile tears at that."

"Oh, hush, Bess!" said Nan. "Let's not be cruel."

"We'll see how she treats you hereafter," Grace said. "I, for one, hope Linda has had a change of heart. She'll be so much happier if she stops quarreling with everybody."

"And the other girls will have a little more peace, too, I fancy; eh?" threw in her brother, slyly. "But how about this place you want to go to this afternoon, Nan?" he added.

"I should think you had had enough excitement for one day," Mrs. Mason sighed. "The wonderful vitality of these young creatures! It amazes me. They wish to be on the go all of the time."

"You see," Nan explained, "we have only a few more days in Chicago and I am so desirous of finding Sallie and Celia. Poor Mrs. Morton is heart-broken, and I expect Celia's mother fears all the time for her daughter's safety, too."

"Those foolish girls!" Mrs. Mason said. "I am glad you young people haven't this general craze for exhibiting one's self in moving pictures."

"You can't tell when that may begin, Mother," chuckled Walter. "When Nan was holding on to Prince and I was dragging Linda out of that sleigh, if a camera-man had been along he could have made some picture—believe me!"

"You'll walk or take a car to the address," Mrs. Mason instructed them. "No more riding behind that excited horse to-day, please."

"All right, Mother," said Walter, obediently. "Now, whenever you girls are ready, I am at your service. It's lucky I know pretty well the poorer localities in Chicago. Your calling district, Nan Sherwood, seems to number in it a lot of shady localities."

However, it was only a poor neighborhood, not a vicious one, in which Jennie Albert lived. Grace had accompanied the chums from Tillbury, and the trio of girls went along very merrily with Walter until they came near to the number Mr. Gray had given them.

This number they had some difficulty in finding. At least, four hundred and sixteen was a big warehouse in which nobody lodged of course. Plenty of tenement houses crowded about it but four hundred and sixteen was surely the warehouse.

While Walter was inquiring in some of the little neighboring stores, Nan saw a child pop out of a narrow alley beside the warehouse and look sharply up and down the street. It was the furtive, timid glance of the woods creature or the urchin of the streets; both expect and fear the attack of the strong.

The Lakeview Hall girls were across the street. The little girl darted suddenly toward them. Her head was covered by an old shawl, which half blinded her. Her garments were scanty for such brisk winter weather, and her shoes were broken.

"Oh, the poor little thing!" murmured Grace Mason.

Nan was suddenly excited by the sight of the child crossing the crowded street; she sprang to the edge of the walk, but did not scream as the little one scurried on. Down the driveway came a heavy auto-truck and although the little girl saw the approach of this, she could not well see what followed the great vehicle.

She escaped the peril of the truck, but came immediately in the path of a touring car that shot out from behind to pass the truck. With a nerve-racking "honk! honk!" the swiftly moving car was upon the child.

Bess and Grace did scream; but Nan, first aware of the little one's danger, was likewise first to attempt her rescue. And she needed her breath for that effort. Other people shouted at the child and, from either sidewalk, Nan was the only person who darted out to save her!

The driver under the steering wheel of the touring car did his best to bring it to an abrupt stop; but the wheels skidded and—for a breathless moment—it did seem as though the shawl-blinded child must go under the wheels of the vehicle.

Nan Sherwood seized the shawl and by main strength dragged its owner to the gutter. The car slid past; both girls were safe!

"You lemme be! you lemme be!" shrieked the girl Nan had rescued, evidently considering herself much abused by the rough treatment her rescuer had given her, and struggling all the time to keep Nan from lifting her upon the sidewalk.

"Why, you little savage!" gasped Bess Harley. "Don't you know you've been saved?"

"Who wants to be saved?" demanded the smaller girl, looking up at the three older ones out of the hood of the shawl she had clung to so desperately. "What youse savin' me from?"

Bess grew more excited. "Why, Nan!" she cried. "It is—it must be! Don't you see who she is?"

Nan was already looking down into the dark, shrewd and thin countenance of the little one with a smile of recognition. It was Inez, the little flower-girl, whom she had so fortunately pulled out of the way of the automobile.

"Hullo, honey; don't you know us?" Nan asked her.

"Hi!" exclaimed the street waif. "If it ain't me tony friends from Washington Park. Say! youse got ter excuse me. I didn't know youse."

"Why, Inez!" exclaimed Nan, kindly. "You have a dreadful cold."

"Say! if I don't have nothin' worse than that I'll do fine," croaked the little girl, carelessly. "But I never expected to see youse tony folks again."

"Why, Inez!" exclaimed Bess. "And we've been hunting all over for you."

"Goodness me!" burst out Grace Mason. "You don't mean to say that this is the poor little thing we've been in such a fuss about?"

"Of course she is," Bess replied.

"This is positively Inez," laughed Nan, squeezing the little one's cold hand in her own. "Aren't you glad to see us, child?"

"I dunno," said Inez, doubtfully. "Youse ain't come to take me back to me aunt, have youse?" and she looked around for a chance to escape. "I ain't goin' to live with her no more—now I tell youse!" and she became quite excited.

Nan sought to reassure her. "Don't you be afraid, honey. We wouldn't see you abused. We only want to help you. That is why we have been searching for you."

"You been huntin' me up—jest to help me?" gasped Inez, in wonder.

"Of course we have," said Bess.

"Hi!" exclaimed the flower-seller, with an impish grin. "I reckon me aunt would say some of yer buttons was missin'. Youse can't be right in the upper story," and she pointed to her own head to illustrate her meaning.

"Goodness!" gasped Grace. "Does she think we are crazy because we want to do her a kindness?"

"She's not used to being treated with much consideration, I am afraid," Nan observed, in a low voice.

"You ridiculous child!" came from Bess. "Don't you know that we were both interested in you that first day? We told you we would see you again."

"Aw, that don't mean nothin'," sniffed Inez. "I didn't expect nothin' would come of it. If youse folks from Washington Park ain't crazy, what is the matter wit' youse? I ain't nothin' ter you."

"Why, goodness me!" cried Grace again. "Do you think everybody who is kind must be out of his head? Who ever heard the like?"

"Folks ain't generally crazy to do me no favors," said Inez, with one of her sharp glances. "But if you girls want ter give me somethin' for nothin,' you've lost some of yer buttons, that's sure!"

Nan and her two companions had to laugh at this, but the laughter was close to tears, after all. It was really pathetic that this waif of the streets should suspect the sanity of anybody who desired to do her a kindness.



CHAPTER XXVII

JENNIE ALBERT—AND SOMEBODY ELSE

"Well! what do you know about that?" was Walter's comment, when he came back to the girls and found them surrounding the hungry looking little street waif, of whom he had already heard so much from Nan and Bess.

"We go out to shoot partridges and bring down a crow," he added. "Goodness! what a hungry looking kid. There's a bakeshop over the way. Bring her in and see if we can't cure this child of old Father Famine."

Inez looked at Walter askance at first. But when she understood that he was going to stand treat to coffee and cakes, she grew friendlier.

"Yep, I'm hungry," she admitted. "Ain't I always hungry? M-m—!" as the shop door opened and she sniffed the odors of coffee and food.

"Do, do hurry and feed the poor little thing," urged Grace, almost in tears. "Oh! I'm sorry I came with you girls. Hungry! Only think of being hungry, Walter!"

Inez looked at Grace as though she thought she was losing her mind.

"Aw, say," said she, "don't let it worry youse. I'm uster being empty, I am. And 'specially since me and me aunt had our fallin' out."

"Oh! we know about that, Inez," cried Bess. "We went there to look for you."

"To me aunt's?" asked Inez, in some excitement.

"Yes," Nan replied.

"Is she a-lookin' for me?" demanded the child with a restless glance at the door of the shop.

"I don't think she is," Nan said.

"I should say not!" Bess added. "She seems to fairly hate you, child. And didn't she beat you?"

"Yep. She's the biggest, ye see. She took away all me money and then burned me basket. That was puttin' me on the fritz for fair, and I went wild and went for her. This is what I got!"

She dropped the shawl off her head suddenly. There, above the temple and where the tangled black hair had been cut away, was a long, angry wound. It was partially healed.

"Oh, my dear!" cried Nan.

Grace fell to crying. Bess grew very angry and threatened all manner of punishments for the cruel aunt.

"How did she do it?" Walter asked.

"Flat iron," replied the waif, succinctly. "I had the poker. She 'got' me first. I didn't dare go back, and I thought I'd die that first night."

"Oh, oh!" sobbed Grace. "Out in the cold, too!"

"Yes'm," Inez said, eating and drinking eagerly. "But a nice feller in a drug store—a night clerk, I guess youse call him—took me in after one o'clock, an' give me something to eat, and fixed up me head."

"What a kind man!" exclaimed Bess.

"So you see, Inez, there are some kind folks in the world," said Nan, smiling at the waif. "Some kind ones beside us."

"Yep," the child admitted. "But not rich folks like youse."

"Goodness, child!" gasped Grace. "We're not rich."

Inez stared at her with a mouthful poised upon her knife. "Cracky!" she ejaculated. "What do youse call it? Furs, and fine dresses, and nothin' ter do but sport around—Hi! if youse girls from Washington Park ain't rich, what d'ye call it?"

Nan was looking serious again. "I guess the child is right," she said, with a little sigh. "We are rich. Compared with what she has, we're as rich as old King Midas."

"For goodness' sake!" cried Bess. "I hope not—at least, not in ears."

The others laughed; but Nan added: "I guess we don't realize how well off we are."

"Hear! hear!" murmured Walter. "Being sure of three meals a day would be riches to this poor little thing."

"Hi!" ejaculated Inez, still eating greedily. "That'd be Heaven, that would!"

"But do let her finish her story, girls," urged Bess. "Go on, dear. What happened to you after the kind druggist took you in?"

"I staid all night there," said Inez. "He fixed me a bunk on an old lounge in the back room. An' next morning a girl I useter see at Mother Beasley's seen me and brought me over here. She ain't well now and her money's about run out, I reckon. Say! did youse ever find them two greenies youse was lookin' for?" she suddenly asked Nan.

"Oh, no! We're looking for them now," Nan replied. "Have you seen them, Inez?"

"I dunno. I b'lieve my friend may know something about them."

"You mean the girl you are with?" Nan asked.

"Yep."

"Who is she?" asked Bess.

"She's one o' them movin' picture actorines. She does stunts."

"'Stunts'?" repeated Walter, while Nan and Bess looked at each other with interest. "What sort of 'stunts,' pray?"

"Hard jobs. Risky ones, too. And that last one she went out on she got an awful cold. Whew! I been expectin' her to cough herself to pieces."

"But what did she do?" repeated the curious Walter.

"Oh, she was out in the country with the X.L.Y. Company. She was playin' a boy's part—she's as thin as I am, but tall and lanky. Makes up fine as a boy," said Inez, with some enthusiasm.

"She was supposed to be a boy helpin' some robbers. They put her through a ventilator into a sleepin' car standin' in the railroad yards. That's where she got cold," Inez added, "for she had to dress awful light so's to wiggle through the ventilator winder. It was a cold mornin', an' she came back ter town 'most dead."

"Where is she now?" asked Walter.

But it was Nan's question which brought out the most surprising response. "Who is she?" Nan asked the little girl. "What is her name?"

"Jennie Albert. An' she's a sure 'nough movie girl, too. But she can't get good jobs because she ain't pretty."

"I declare!" exclaimed Bess, finally, after a moment of surprised silence.

"I know she can't live over there in that big warehouse, and that's number four hundred and sixteen," said Grace.

"She lives in a house back in a court beside that big one," explained Inez. "It's four hundred and sixteen and a half."

"Then it's only half a house?" suggested Bess Harley.

"I know it can be only half fit to live in," said Walter. "Not many of these around here are. What are you going to do now, Nan?"

"Inez will take us over and introduce us to Jennie."

"Sure thing!" agreed the waif.

"Tell us, Inez," Nan said. "What can we take in to your friend Jennie?"

"To eat, or comforts of any kind?" cried Grace, opening her purse at once.

"Hi!" cried Inez. "Jest look around. Anything youse see. She ain't got nothin'."

"Which was awful grammar, but the most illuminating sentence I ever heard," declared Bess, afterward.

The girls made special inquiries of the child, however, and they did more than carry over something for the sick girl to eat. They bought an oil heater and a big can of oil, for the girl's room was unheated.

There was extra bed-clothing and some linen to get, too, for Inez was an observant little thing and knew just what the sick girl needed. Walter meanwhile bought fresh fruit and canned goods—soup and preserved fruit—and a jar of calf's foot jelly.

The procession that finally took up its march into the alley toward number four hundred and sixteen and a half, headed by Inez and with the boy from the shop bearing the heater and the oil can as rear guard, was an imposing one indeed.

"See what I brought you, Jen Albert!" cried Inez, as she burst in the door of the poorly furnished room. "These are some of me tony friends from Washington Park, and they've come to have a picnic."

The room was as cheaply and meanly furnished as any that the three girls from Lakeview Hall had ever seen. Nan thought she had seen poverty of household goods and furnishings when she had lived for a season with her Uncle Henry Sherwood at Pine Camp, in the woods of Upper Michigan. Some of the neighbors there had scarcely a factory made chair to sit on. But this room in which Jennie Albert lived, and to which she had brought the little flower-seller for shelter, was so barren and ugly that it made Nan shudder as she gazed at it.

The girl who rose suddenly off the ragged couch as the three friends entered, startled them even more than the appearance of the room itself. She was so thin and haggard—she had such red, red cheeks—such feverish eyes—such an altogether wild and distraught air—that timid Grace shrank back and looked at Walter, who remained with the packages and bundles at the head of the stairs.

Nan and Bess likewise looked at the girl with some trepidation; but they held their ground.

"What do you want? Who are you?" asked Jennie Albert, hoarsely.

"We—we have come to see you," explained Nan, hesitatingly. "We're friends of little Inez."

"You'd better keep away from here!" cried the older girl, fiercely. "This is no place for the likes of you."

"Aw, say! Now, don't get flighty again, Jen," urged little Inez, much worried. "I tell youse these girls is all right. Why, they're pertic'lar friends of mine."

"Your—your friends?" muttered the wild looking girl. "This—this is a poor place to bring your friends, Ina. But—do sit down! Do take a chair!"

She waved her hand toward the only chair there was—a broken-armed parlor chair, the upholstery of which was in rags. She laughed as she did so—a sudden, high, cackling laugh. Then she broke out coughing and—as Inez had said—she seemed in peril of shaking herself to pieces!

"Oh, the poor thing!" murmured Bess to Nan.

"She is dreadfully ill," the latter whispered. "She ought really to have a doctor right now."

"Oh, girls!" gasped Grace, in terror. "Let's come away. Perhaps she has some contagious disease. She looks just awful!"

The sick girl heard this, low as the three visitors spoke. "And I feel 'just awful!'" she gasped, when she got her breath after coughing. "You'd better not stay to visit Ina. This is no place for you."

"Why, we must do something to help you," Nan declared, recovering some of her assurance. "Surely you should have a doctor."

"He gimme some medicine for her yisterday," broke in Inez. "But we ain't got no more money for medicine. Has we, Jen?"

"Not much for anything else, either," muttered the bigger girl, turning her face away.

She was evidently ashamed of her poverty. Nan saw that it irked Jennie Albert to have strangers see her need and she hastened, as usual, to relieve the girl of that embarrassment.

"My dear," she said, running to her as Jennie sat on the couch, and putting an arm about the poor, thin, shaking shoulders. "My dear! we would not disturb you only that you may be able to help us find two lost girls. And you are so sick. Do let us stay a while and help you, now that we have come, in return for the information you can give us about Sallie Morton and Celia Snubbins."

"Gracious! who are they?" returned Jennie Albert. "I never heard of them, I'm sure," and she seemed to speak quite naturally for a moment.

"Oh, my dear!" murmured Nan. "Haven't you seen them at all? Why, they told me at the studio—"

"I know! I know!" exclaimed Bess, suddenly. "Jennie doesn't know their right names. Nan means Lola Montague and Marie Fortesque."

Jennie Albert stared wonderingly at them. "Why—those girls? I remember them, of course," she said. "I supposed those names were assumed, but I had no idea they really owned such ugly ones."

"And where, for goodness' sake, are they?" cried the impatient Bess.

"Miss Montague and her friend?"

"Yes," Nan explained. "We are very anxious to find them, and have been looking for them ever since we came to Chicago. You see, they have run away from home, Jennie, and their parents are terribly worried about them."

"Maybe they were ill-treated at home," Jennie Albert said, gloomily.

"Oh, they were not!" cried Bess, eagerly. "We know better. Poor old Si Snubbins thinks just the world and all of Celia."

"And Mrs. Morton is one of the loveliest women I ever met," Nan added. "The girls have just gone crazy over the movies."

"Over acting in them, do you mean?" asked the girl who "did stunts."

"Yes. And they can't act. Mr. Gray says so."

"Oh, if they were no good he'd send them packing in a hurry," groaned the sick girl, holding her head with both hands. "I sent them over to him because I knew he wanted at least one extra."

"And he did not even take their address," Nan explained. "Do you know where they live?"

"No, I don't. They just happened in here. I know that they recently moved from a former lodging they had on the other side of town. That is really all I know about them," said Jennie Albert.

Meanwhile Walter had been quietly handing in the packages to his sister and Bess. The oil stove was deftly filled by the good-hearted boy before he lifted it and the can of oil inside.

When the big lamp was lit the chill of the room was soon dispelled. Little Inez opened the packages eagerly, chattering all the time to Jennie Albert about the good things the young folks from Washington Park had brought.

But the sick girl, after her little show of interest in Nan's questioning, quickly fell back into a lethargic state. Nan whispered to Inez and asked her about the doctor she had seen for Jennie.

"Is he a good one?" she asked the child. "And will he come here if we pay him?"

"He's a corker!" exclaimed the street waif. "But he's mighty busy. You got to show him money in your hand to get him to come to see anybody. You know how these folks are around here. They don't have no money for nothin'—least of all for doctors."

She told Nan where the busy physician was to be found, and Nan whispered to Walter the address and sent him hurrying for the man of pills and powders.

Until the doctor returned with Walter the girls busied themselves cleaning up the room, undressing the patient, and putting her into bed between fresh sheets, and making her otherwise more comfortable. There was a good woman on this same floor of the old tenement house, and Grace paid her out of her own purse to look in on Jennie Albert occasionally and see that she got her medicine and food.

For they were all determined not to leave little Inez in these poor lodgings. "Goodness knows," Bess remarked, "if she gets out of our sight now we may never find her again. She's just as elusive as a flea!"

The child looked at Bess in her sly, wondering way, and said: "Hi! I never had nobody worry over what become of me 'fore this. Seems like it's somethin' new."



CHAPTER XXVIII

WHAT HAPPENED TO INEZ

Walter, who had gone downstairs to wait after he had brought the doctor, had a long wait in the cold court at the door of the lodging house in which Jennie Albert lived. A less patient and good-natured boy would have been angry when his sister and her school chums finally appeared.

He was glad that Grace took an interest in anything besides her own pleasure and comfort. His sister, Walter thought, was too much inclined to dodge responsibility and everything unpleasant.

He wanted her to be more like Nan. "But, then," the boy thought, "there's only one Nan Sherwood in the world. Guess I can't expect Grace to run a very close second to her."

However, when the girls did appear Grace was chattering just as excitedly as Bess Harley herself; and she led Inez by the hand.

"Yes, she shall! She'll go right home with me now—sha'n't she, Walter?" Grace cried. "You get a taxi, and we'll all pile in—did you ever ride in a taxi, Inez?"

"Nope. But I caught on behind a jitney once," confessed the little girl, "and a cop bawled me out for it."

"We're going to take her home, and dress her up nice," Bess explained to Walter, "and give her the time of her life."

Inez seemed a bit dazed. In her own vernacular she would probably have said—had she found her voice—that "things was comin' too fast for her." She scarcely knew what these girls intended to do with her; but she had a good deal of confidence in Nan Sherwood, and she looked back at her frequently.

It was to Nan, too, that Walter looked for directions as to their further movements, as well as for exact information as to what had gone on up stairs in Jennie Albert's room.

"She's an awfully plucky girl," Nan said. "No; she's not very ill now," the doctor said, "but she does have a dreadful cough. However, the doctor has given her medicine.

"It's odd," Nan added thoughtfully, "but she got this cold down at Tillbury. The company she was out with were taking pictures near there. There's a big old mansion called the Coscommon House that hasn't been occupied for years. It's often filmed by movie people; but never in the winter before, that I know of."

"But, Nan!" exclaimed Walter. "What did we come over here for, anyway? How about those runaway girls?"

"I'm sorry," Nan said, shaking her head; "but we haven't found them. They don't live here, and Jennie doesn't know where they do live."

"Goodness! What elusive creatures they are," grumbled Walter.

"Aren't they!" Bess exclaimed. "Jennie Albert just happened to meet them when they were looking for work, and told them where she lived. So they came around to see her the other day. That Mr. Gray we saw at the studio had just sent for Jennie, and so she told them to go around and see him. Yes! Just think! 'Lola Montague' and 'Marie Fortesque'! Say! Aren't those names the limit?"

But Nan considered the matter too serious to joke about. "I am afraid that Sallie and Celia must be about to their limit," she said. "Poor Mrs. Morton! She said Sallie was stubborn, and she must be, to endure so many disappointments and not give up and go home."

"The sillies!" said Walter. "How about it, kid? Would you run away from a good home, even if it were in the country?"

"Not if the eats came reg'lar and they didn't beat me too much," declared Inez, repeating her former declaration.

"Well, then, we'll take you where the 'eats' at least come regular," laughed Walter. "Eh, Grace?"

"Of course. Do hurry and get that taxi."

"What do you suppose your mother will say, Grace?" demanded Bess, in sudden doubt, when Walter had departed to telephone for the taxi-cab.

"I know mother will pity the poor little soul," Grace declared. "I'm sure she belongs to enough charitable boards and committees so that she ought to be delighted that we bring a real 'case,' as she calls them, to her," and Grace laughed at her own conceit.

Nan, however, wondered if, after all, Mrs. Mason would care to take any practical responsibility upon herself regarding the street waif. It was one thing to be theoretically charitable and an entirely different matter to take a case of deserving charity into one's own home.

But that thought did not disturb Nan. She had already planned a future for little Inez. She was determined to take her back to Tillbury and leave Inez with her mother.

"I'm sure," Nan said to herself, "that Momsey will be glad to have a little girl around the house again. And Inez can go to school, and grow to be good and polite. For, goodness knows! she is a little savage now."

Eventually these dreams of Nan for little Inez came true. Just at present, however, much more material things happened to her when they arrived at the Mason house.

Grace and Bess hung over the little girl, and fussed about her, as Walter laughingly said, "like a couple of hens over one chicken."

Nan was glad to see her schoolmates so much interested in the waif. She knew it would do both Grace and Bess good to have their charitable emotions awakened.

As for Mrs. Mason, Nan soon saw that that kindly lady would be both helpful and wise in the affair. Left to their own desires, Grace and Bess would have dressed Inez up like a French doll. But Nan told Mrs. Mason privately just what she hoped to do with the child, and the lady heartily approved.

"A very good thing—very good, indeed, Nan Sherwood," said Mrs. Mason, "if your father and mother approve."

As it chanced, there was a letter from Mrs. Sherwood awaiting Nan when she and her schoolmates arrived with Inez; from it Nan learned that her father would be in Chicago the next day, having been called to a final conference with the heads of the automobile corporation.

"Mr. Bulson is so insistent, and is so ugly," the letter said, "that I fear your dear father will have to go to court. It will be a great expense as well as a notorious affair.

"Fighting an accusation that you cannot disprove is like Don Quixote's old fight with the windmill. There is nothing to be gained in the end. It is a dreadful, dreadful thing."

Nan determined to meet her father and tell him all about Inez. She was sure he would be interested in the waif, and in her plans for Inez's future.

That night, however, at the Mason house, there was much excitement among the young people. Of course the girls got Katie, the maid, to help with Inez. Katie would have done anything for Nan, if not for Grace herself; and although she did not at first quite approve of the street waif, she ended in loving Inez.

In the first place they bathed the child and wrapped her in a soft, fleecy gown of Grace's. Her clothing, every stitch of it, was carried gingerly down to the basement by Katie, and burned.

From the garments Mrs. Harley had sent a complete outfit for the child was selected. They were probably the best garments Inez had ever worn.

"She looks as nice now as me own sister," Katie declared, when, after a deal of fussing and chatting in the girls' suite, the street waif was dressed from top to toe.

"Now ye may take her down to show the mistress; and I belave she will be plazed."

This was a true prophecy. Not only was Mrs. Mason delighted with the changed appearance of Inez, but Mr. Mason approved, too; while Walter considered the metamorphosis quite marvelous.

"Great!" he said. "Get her filled up, and filled out, and her appearance alone will pay you girls for your trouble."

While they talked and joked about her, Inez fell fast asleep with her head pillowed in Nan Sherwood's lap.



CHAPTER XXIX

THE KEY TO A HARD LOCK

The young people had planned to spend that next forenoon at a skating rink, where the ice was known to be good; but Nan ran away right after breakfast to meet her father's train, intending to join the crowd at the rink later.

"I'll take your skates for you, Nan," Walter assured her, as she set forth for the station.

"That's so kind of you, Walter," she replied gratefully.

"Say! I'd do a whole lot more for you than that," blurted out the boy, his face reddening.

"I think you have already," said Nan, sweetly, waving him good-bye from the taxi in which Mrs. Mason had insisted she should go to the station.

She settled back in her seat and thought happily for a few minutes. She had been so busy with all sorts of things here in Chicago—especially with what Bess Harley called "other people's worries"—that Nan had scarcely been able to think of her hopes for the future, or her memories of the past. She had been living very much in the present.

"Why," she thought, with something like a feeling of remorse, "I haven't even missed Beautiful Beulah. I—I wonder if I am really growing up? Oh, dear!"

Mr. Sherwood thought her a very much composed and sophisticated little body, indeed, when he met her on the great concourse of the railway station.

"Goodness me, Nan!" he declared, when he had greeted her. "How you do grow. Your mother and I have seen so little of you since we came back from Scotland, that we haven't begun to realize that you are a big, big girl."

"Don't make me out too big, Papa Sherwood!" she cried, clinging to his arm. "I—I don't want to grow up entirely. I want for a long time to be your little girl.

"I know what we'll do," cried Nan, delightedly. "You have plenty of time before your business conference. We'll walk along together to see how Jennie Albert is—it isn't far from here—and you shall buy me a bag of peanuts, just as you used to do, and we'll eat 'em right on the street as we go along."

"Is that the height of your ambition?" laughed Mr. Sherwood. "If so, you are easily satisfied."

Nan told her father all about the search for the runaway girls, and about little Inez and Jennie Albert. She wanted to see how the latter was. The comforts she and her friends had left the sick girl the day before, and the ministrations of the physician, should have greatly improved Jennie's condition.

Nan left her father at the entrance to the alley leading back to Jennie's lodging; but in a few minutes she came flying back to Mr. Sherwood in such excitement that at first she could scarcely speak connectedly.

"Why, Nan! What is the matter?" her father demanded.

"Oh! come up and see Jennie! Do come up and see Jennie!" urged Nan.

"What is the matter with her? Is she worse?"

"Oh, no! Oh, no!" cried the excited girl. "But she has got such a wonderful thing to tell you, Papa Sherwood!"

"To tell me?" asked her father wonderingly.

"Yes! Come!" Nan seized his hand and pulled him into the alley. On the way she explained a little of the mystery.

"Dear me! it's the most wonderful thing, Papa Sherwood. You know, I told you Jennie was working for a moving picture company that was making a film at Tillbury. She had a boy's part; she looks just like a boy with a cap on, for her hair is short.

"Well! Now listen! They took those pictures the day before, and the very day that you came back from Chicago to Tillbury and that awful Mr. Bulson lost his money and watch."

"What's that?" demanded Mr. Sherwood, suddenly evincing all the interest Nan expected him to in the tale.

As they mounted the stairs Nan retailed how the company had gone to the railroad yards early in the morning, obtaining permission from the yardmaster to film a scene outside the sleeping car standing there on a siding, including the entrance of Jennie as the burglars' helper through the narrow ventilator.

"Of course, the sleeping car doors can only be opened from the inside when it is occupied, save with a key," Nan hastened to say; "so you see she was supposed to enter through the ventilator and afterward open the door to the men."

"I see," Mr. Sherwood observed, yet still rather puzzled by his daughter's vehemence.

Jennie Albert, however, when he was introduced to her by Nan, gave a much clearer account of the matter. To take up the story where Nan had broken off, Jennie, when she wriggled through the window into the car, had seen a big negro man stooping over a man in a lower berth and removing something from under his pillow.

The man in the berth was lying on his back and snoring vociferously. There seemed to be no other passenger remaining in the car.

Jennie did not see what the colored man took from the sleeping passenger, but she was sure he was robbing him. The negro, however, saw Jennie, and threatened to harm her if she ever spoke of the matter.

The director of the picture and other men were outside. The girl was alarmed and more than half sick then. She had the remainder of the director's instructions to carry out.

Therefore, she hurried to open the sleeping car door as her instructions called for, and the negro thief escaped without Jennie's saying a word to anybody about him.

Mr. Sherwood, as deeply interested, but calmer than Nan, asked questions to make sure of the identity of the sleeping passenger. It was Mr. Ravell Bulson, without a doubt.

"And about the negro?" he asked the girl. "Describe him."

But all Jennie could say was that he was a big, burly fellow with a long, long nose.

"An awfully long nose for a colored person," said Jennie. "He frightened me so, I don't remember much else about him—and I'm no scare-cat, either. You ask any of the directors I have worked for during the past two years. If I only had a pretty face like your Nan, here, Mr. Sherwood, they'd be giving me the lead in feature films—believe me!"

The mystery of how the negro got into the locked car was explained when Mr. Sherwood chanced to remember that the porter of the coach in which he had ridden from Chicago that night answered the description Jennie Albert gave of the person who had robbed Mr. Bulson.

"I remember that nose!" declared Mr. Sherwood, with satisfaction. "Now we'll clear this mystery up. You have given me a key, Miss Jennie, to what was a very hard lock to open."

This proved to be true. Mr. Sherwood went to his conference with the automobile people with a lighter heart. On their advice, he told the story to the police and the description of the negro porter was recognized as that of a man who already had a police record—one "Nosey" Thompson.

This negro had obtained a position with the sleeping car company under a false name and with fraudulent recommendations.

These facts Nan, at least, did not learn till later; she ran off to the skating rink, secure in the thought that her father's trouble with Mr. Ravell Bulson was over. She hoped she might never see that grouchy fat man again. But Fate had in store for her another meeting with the disagreeable Mr. Bulson, and this fell out in a most surprising way.

When Nan was almost in sight of the building where she expected to join her friends on skates, there sounded the sudden clangor of fire-truck whistles, and all other traffic halted to allow the department machines to pass. A taxi-cab crowded close in to the curb where Nan had halted, just as the huge ladder-truck, driven by its powerful motor, swung around the corner.

Pedestrians, of course, had scattered to the sidewalks; but the wheels of the ladder-truck skidded on the icy street and the taxi was caught a glancing blow by the rear wheel of the heavier vehicle.

Many of the onlookers screamed warnings in chorus; but all to no avail. Indeed, there was nothing the driver of the cab could have done to avert the catastrophe. His engine was stopped and there was no possibility of escape with the car.

Crash! the truck-wheel clashed against the frail cab, and the latter vehicle was crushed as though made of paper. The driver went out on his head. Screams of fear issued from the interior of the cab as it went over in a heap of wreckage and the ladder-truck thundered on.

Nan saw a fat face with bulging eyes set in it appear at the window of the cab. She was obliged to spring away to escape being caught in the wreck. But she ran back instantly, for there were more than the owner of the fat face in the overturned taxi.

With the sputtering of the fat man there sounded, too, a shrill, childish scream of fear, and a wild yelp of pain—the latter unmistakably from a canine throat. Amid the wreckage Nan beheld a pair of blue-stockinged legs encased in iron supports; but the dog wriggled free.

"Hey! Hey!" roared the fat man. "Help us out of this. Never mind that driver. He ought to have seen that thing coming and got out of the way. Hey! Help us out, I say."

Nobody seemed to be paying much attention to the fat and angry citizen; nor would Nan have heeded him had it not been for the appeal of those two blue-stockinged legs in the iron braces.

The fat man was all tangled up in the robes and in the broken fittings of the cab. He could do nothing for himself, let alone assist in the rescue of the owner of the crippled little limbs. The dog, darting about, barked wildly.

As Nan stooped to lift the broken cab door off the apparently injured boy, the dog—he was only a puppy—ran yapping at her in a fever of apprehension. But his barking suddenly changed to yelps of joy as he leaped on Nan and licked her hands.

"Why, Buster!" gasped the girl, recognizing the little spaniel that she and Bess Harley had befriended in the snow-bound train.

She knew instantly, then, whose was the fat and apoplectic face; but she did not understand about the legs in the cruel looking iron braces until she had drawn a small and sharp-featured lad of seven or eight years of age from under the debris of the taxi-cab.

"Jingo! Look at Pop!" exclaimed the crippled boy, who seemed not to have been hurt at all in the accident.

Mr. Ravell Bulson was trying to struggle out from under the cab. And to his credit he was not thinking of himself at this time.

"How's Junior?" he gasped. "Are you hurt, Junior?"

"No, Pop, I ain't hurt," said the boy with the braces. "But, Jingo! you do look funny."

"I don't feel so funny," snarled his parent, finally extricating himself unaided from the tangle. "Sure you're not hurt, Junior?"

"No, I'm not hurt," repeated the boy. "Nor Buster ain't hurt. And see this girl, Pop. Buster knows her."

Mr. Ravell Bulson just then obtained a clear view of Nan Sherwood, against whom the little dog was crazily leaping. The man scowled and in his usual harsh manner exclaimed:

"Call the dog away, Junior. If you're not hurt we'll get another cab and go on."

"Why, Pop!" cried the lame boy, quite excitedly. "That pup likes her a whole lot. See him? Say, girl, did you used to own that puppy?"

"No, indeed, dear," said Nan, laughing. "But he remembers me."

"From where?" demanded the curious Ravell Bulson, Jr.

"Why, since the time we were snow-bound in a train together."

"Oh! when was that?" burst out the boy. "Tell me about it snow-bound in a steam-car train? That must have been jolly."

"Come away, Junior!" exclaimed his father. "You don't care anything about that, I'm sure."

"Oh, yes I do, Pop. I want to hear about it. Fancy being snow-bound in a steam-car train!"

"Come away, I tell you," said the fat man, again scowling crossly at Nan. "You don't want to hear anything that girl can tell you. Come away, now," he added, for a crowd was gathering.

"Do wait a minute, Pop," said Junior. The lame boy evidently was used to being indulged, and he saw no reason for leaving Nan abruptly. "See the dog. See Buster, will you? Why, he's just in love with this girl."

"I tell you to come on!" complained Mr. Bulson, Senior. He was really a slave to the crippled boy's whims; but he disliked being near Nan Sherwood, or seeing Junior so friendly with her. "You can't know that girl, if the dog does," he snarled.

"Why, yes I can, Pop," said the lame boy, with cheerful insistence. "And I want to hear about her being snowed up in a train with Buster."

"Your father can tell you all about it," Nan said, kindly, not wishing to make Mr. Bulson any angrier. "He was there in the snowed-up train, too. That's how I came to be acquainted with your little dog. He was with your father on the train."

"Why, Pop!" cried the eager boy. "You never told me a word about it. And you must know this girl."

Mr. Ravell Bulson only grunted and scowled.

"What's your name, girl?" cried the boy, curiously.

"I am Nan Sherwood," the girl said, kissing him and then giving him a gentle push toward his father's outstretched and impatient hand. "If I don't see you again I shall often think of you. Be good to Buster."

"You must tell me about being snowed up, Pop," urged little Junior, as Nan turned away. "And I like that girl."

"That isn't much to tell—and I don't like her—nor any of her name," snapped Mr. Bulson.

"But you'll tell me about the snowed-up train?"

"Yes, yes!" cried his father, impatiently, anxious to get his lame son away from Nan's vicinity. "I'll tell you all about it."

Nan was quite sure that the fat man would be ashamed to give his little son the full particulars of his own experience on the stalled train. The little chap, despite his affliction, was an attractive child and seemed to have inherited none of his father's unhappy disposition.

"Good bye, Nan Sherwood!" he cried after the girl. "Come, Buster! Come, Buster! My, Pop! Buster likes that girl!"

"Well, I don't," declared the fat man, still scowling at Nan.

"Don't you?" cried Junior. "That's funny. I like her, and Buster likes her, and you don't, Pop. I hope I'll see you again, Nan Sherwood."

His father almost dragged him away, the spaniel, on a leash, cavorting about the lame boy. Nan was amazed by the difference in the behavior of Mr. Bulson and his afflicted son.

"And won't he be surprised when he learns that it wasn't Papa Sherwood, after all, but that wicked negro porter, who stole his wallet and watch?" Nan mused. "I hope they find the man and punish him. But—it really does seem as though Mr. Bulson ought to be punished, too, for making my father so much trouble."

Later "Nosey" Thompson was captured; but he had spent all Mr. Bulson's money in a drunken spree, and while intoxicated had been robbed of the watch. So, in the end, the quarrelsome fat man, who had so maligned Mr. Sherwood and caused him so much trouble, recovered nothing—not even his lost temper.

"Which must be a good thing," was Bess Harley's comment. "For if I had a temper like his, I'd want to lose it—and for good and all!"

"But there must be some good in that fat man," Nan said, reflectively.

"Humph! Now find some excuse for him, Nan Sherwood!" said her chum.

"No. Not an excuse. He maligned Papa Sherwood and I can't forgive him. But his little boy thinks the world of him, I can see; and Mr. Bulson is very fond of the little boy—'Junior,' as he calls him."

"Well," quoth Bess, "so does a tiger-cat love its kittens. He's a gouty, grumpy old fellow, with an in-growing grouch. I couldn't see a mite of good in him with a spyglass."

Her chum laughed heartily at that statement. "Well, let us hope he will keep so far away from us after this that we will have to use a spyglass to see him at all."

"And there's another person who can stay away from us," said Bess, suddenly.

"Who's that?" queried Nan, looking up at the change in Bess' voice.

"Linda Riggs. She's coming this way," Bess said, tartly.

This conversation occurred in the skating rink, and while Nan was having her skates strapped on by an attendant, for Walter Mason was not at the moment in sight.

The haughty daughter of the railroad president evidently proposed speaking with the chums from Tillbury. They had not seen her since the runaway and more than once Nan had wondered just what attitude Linda would take when they again met.

For Nan's part, she would rather not have met the rich girl at all. She had no particular ill-feeling toward her now; although time was when Linda had done all in her power to hurt Nan's reputation—and that not so very long past. But having actually helped to save the girl's life, Nan Sherwood could not hold any grudge against Linda. Bess, on the other hand, bristled like an angry dog when she saw Linda approach.

Linda came skating along warily, and arrived at the chums' bench by a series of graceful curves. She was rather a good skater, but more showy than firm on her skates.

"Oh, girls! I'm awful glad to see you," Linda cried, boisterously—and that boisterousness doubtless was assumed to cover her natural embarrassment at meeting again the girl whom she had so injured. "I didn't have time," pursued Linda, hurriedly, "the other day, to thank you properly—or Walter—for helping me out of that sleigh. I was scared."

"I should think you would have been," Bess said, rather grimly. "I'm sure I thought you would never get out of it alive."

"Well," repeated Linda, more doubtfully, for Nan had remained silent, "I wanted to thank you for what you did for me."

"You needn't thank me," said Bess, sharply. "For I didn't do a thing."

"Well, Nan Sherwood did, I s'pose," Linda observed, her color rising.

"You are heartily welcome if you think you need to thank me, Linda," Nan said, quietly. "But Walter really did it all."

"Of course!" said Linda, tossing her head, for Bess' manner had rasped the rich girl, "I know it took Walter to do it. But I presumed you girls expected to be thanked, too," and she turned sharply away.

"Oh, Bess! we ought not to have spoken as we did," murmured Nan, contritely.

"Pooh! Let her go. Mean old thing!" exclaimed Bess. "And you didn't say anything to get her mad. Crocodile tears! what did I tell you? Linda Riggs is a regular cat—"

"Both cat and crocodile?" giggled Nan. "Your natural history, Bess, honey, must be slightly twisted."

"I've about got that girl's number, just the same," said Bess, slangily. "You wait, Nan. She'll be just as mean when we get to Lakeview Hall as ever she was. Mark my word."

"All right, Worthy Prophetess," said Nan, seriously. "I mark thee well. But I am afraid we are in the wrong this time. We should have encouraged her attempt to be grateful."

She had no idea—nor had Nan Sherwood herself—that it lay within Linda's power, if it did in her wish, to injure Nan further. But Fate weaves strange webs of ordinary circumstances and that very evening Nan Sherwood came in close contact with Linda Riggs again, and the incident savored of a new peril, as keen as it was unexpected.

Walter was a minute late at the dinner table that night and as he slid into his seat beside Nan, after excusing himself to his mother and receiving her absolution in a smile, he whispered to Nan:

"What's 'on' for after dinner?"

"I really do not know of anything, Walter," she replied, smiling. "Don't you suppose we girls ever want to keep quiet? This visit to your house has been one continual round of pleasure—"

"Yes. You get your pleasure out of rescuing kids from the street, chasing runaway horses, hunting for runaway girls, and playing Sister of Charity to sick people. Say! your idea of pleasure, Nan Sherwood, is simply funny. Now, I've got something on for this evening, if you, and Bess, and Grace—and the kid, of course—want to go. But no crowd. My exchequer will not stand it.

"I'm running low in funds and father won't let me overdraw my allowance, although he lets Grace do it almost every month. He says a girl hasn't any head for figures, anyway, and she's to be excused."

"Oh, my!" gasped Nan. "That maligns the sex. I ought not to allow that, Walter Mason."

"Huh!" returned the boy, grinning. "Grace doesn't mind how much the sex is maligned, I warrant, as long as father hands her out an extra five whenever she runs short."

"But you haven't told me what the scheme is for this evening," Nan reminded him.

"Movies," Walter said. "There's a dandy new theatre opened on Halliburton Street. It isn't far, and mother approves of the class of pictures they run. There are going to be some funny ones shown to-night, too. I'll stand treat for you girls—but no more."

"Dear me, Walter," cried Nan. "You spend all your money on us girls."

"It couldn't go in a better cause," retorted the generous boy, stoutly.

Permission for the evening's outing was easily obtained, and the quintette of pleasure-seeking young folk hurried away immediately after dinner, so as to see the first show and get home early. Little Inez was as eager and excited as she could be over the prospect of seeing a real movie show.

"I seen some pictures once in a dance hall where a man let me sell me flowers," she explained. "But, I never dared spend a nickel for no show. Me aunt would have scalped me—sure she would!"

Mr. Sherwood had seen Inez's aunt that afternoon, at his little daughter's request, and found that the woman dared make no objection as to their disposal of the child. In fact, she seemed a good deal relieved that kind friends had been raised for Inez.

The party arrived at the new picture palace to find a goodly crowd already assembled at the entrance. On this opening night there was a good deal of local interest shown, and the first picture was being finished when Nan Sherwood and her friends crowded into their seats.

"That's a good picture, I warrant," Walter said. "We want to stay and see that run over again. Ah-ha! here comes a Keynote Comedy. That will be a funny one, sure."

"I like to laugh," announced Inez, with her most serious air. "But I ain't never had much time for it."

"You poor little mite," said Bess. "I should say you hadn't. But you'll laugh all right when you get home with us to Tillbury. Won't she, Nan?"

"Of course she will," agreed Nan, squeezing the little one close to her.

They did not, however, laugh much at the picture which followed. The reels did not seem to run very evenly. Either the operator was not an experienced one or there was something the matter with the machine. The flash-card, "Wait a minute, please," appeared so frequently on the screen that the audience began to murmur, and some got up and went out.

There were others ready to take their places, and this continual changing of positions in the half-darkness of the house made a confusion that was hard to bear.

Nan and her friends moved over against the wall and another party came rustling in to take the seats in that row nearest to the aisle. Not until this crowd was seated did the party from the Mason house realize that it was anybody whom they knew.

Then Pearl Graves' rather loud voice broke in upon Nan and Walter's whispered conversation:

"Why! see who's here?" she cried. "Hullo, Walter Mason. Who's that you've got with you? Nan Sherwood, I'll be bound. And Grace, and Bess Harley. Hullo, girls! Is the show any good?"

"For goodness' sake!" interposed the sharp voice of the girl on the other side of Pearl. "Can't we go anywhere without running up against that Nan Sherwood and her crowd?"

"Oh, you be still, Linda!" laughed good-natured Pearl. "You ought to be pleased as Punch to see Nan and Walter. Between them they just about saved your life when Granny Graves' horses ran away with you the other day."

Little Inez was on Nan's other side and immediately Nan gave her attention to the child, leaving Walter free to talk with the new-comers if he chose.

"Did you like that picture, dear?" asked Nan of the little one.

"Hi! I liked it where the fat man slipped up on the soap at the top of the stairs and slid to the bottom where the scrub-woman left her tub of water. Do you 'spect that was real water, Nan Sherwood? He'd ha' been drowned, wouldn't he?"

"I guess it was real water," laughed Nan. "But they wouldn't let him be drowned in a picture."

"I forget it's a picture," sighed little Inez, exhibiting thereby true dramatic feeling for the art of acting. To her small mind the pantomime seemed real.

Another reel was started. The projection of it flickered on the screen until it dazzled one's eyes to try to watch it.

"Goodness!" gasped Pearl Graves. "I hope that won't keep up."

The excited little Hebrew who owned the theatre ran, sputtering, up the aisle, and climbed into the gallery to expostulate with the operator. There was an explosion of angry voices from the operator's box when the proprietor reached it.

The reel was halted again—this time without the projection of the usual "Wait a minute, please," card. The next instant there was another explosion; but not of voices.

A glare of greenish flame was projected from the box in the gallery where the machine was located—then followed a series of crackling, snapping explosions!

It was indeed startling, and there were a general craning of necks and excited whispering in the audience; but it might have gone no further had it not been for Linda Riggs.

It could not have been with malice—for the result swept Linda herself into the vortex of excitement and peril that followed; but the railroad president's daughter shrieked at the loudest pitch of her voice:

"Fire! fire! We'll all be burned to death! Fire!"

"Be still!" "Sit down!" were commands that instantly sounded from all parts of the house.

But the mischief was done, and Linda continued to shriek in apparently an abandonment of terror:

"Fire! Fire!"

Other nervous people took up the cry. Nearly half a thousand spectators were seated in the picture theatre and the smell of smoke was in their nostrils and the glare of fire above them.

For something, surely, was burning in the operator's box. The danger of the inflammable film was in the minds of all. A surge of the crowd toward the main exit signaled the first panic.

The outgoing rush was met by those who (not understanding the commotion) had been waiting at the back for seats. These people would not give way easily as the frightened audience pushed up the main aisle.

Those at the sides escaped more easily, for there was an exit on either side of the audience room. In the case of Nan Sherwood and her party, however, they were in the worst possible position as far as quick escape went. By some oversight of the fire inspectors the seats on several front rows had been built close against the sidewalls, with no passage at that end of the rows for entrance or egress.

Bess was next to the wall, and she jumped up, crying: "Oh, come on, girls! let's get out. Walter! I say, Walter! I'm frightened. Let us go."

Grace was crying.

Nan hugged Inez close to her and looked to Walter, too, to extricate them from their situation. But Linda had reached across her cousin, Pearl Graves, and clawed at Walter in abject terror. "Oh, save me! save me, Walter!" she moaned. "I am so afraid of fire—and in a place like this! Oh! oh!"

"Shut that girl's mouth!" exclaimed one man from the front. "Stop that screaming! There is no danger! The fire is confined to the box, and that is made of sheet iron. We're all right. Don't crowd!"

The panic had, however, spread too far.

The mob struggled and fought at the main doors. The police had been summoned; but they could not get into the building through the main entrance, and the side exits were toward the rear. Several people were knocked down and trampled on. A pungent odor of burning filled the theatre; the crackling of the flames grew louder and louder.

Walter had his hands full with Linda and Pearl, who had become likewise panic-stricken. Nan pushed Grace and Bess back toward the wall.

"Stand right where you are. We mustn't get in that crowd. We'll be killed," advised she, holding little Inez close to her.

"Save me! save me, Walter!" wailed Linda.

"I wish somebody would take this girl out of the way!" growled Walter Mason in much disgust, and far from gallant.

"Don't leave me!" shrieked Linda.

People began madly to climb over the seats—and over one another—to reach the side exits.

"How ever will we get out, Nan?" demanded Bess Harley, with keen faith in her chum.

"Keep still. Let us wait," urged Nan.

But at that instant red and yellow flames burst from the box where the picture projecting machine was housed. These flames began to lick up the furnishings of the balcony like so much tinder. Sparks and dense smoke were thrown off and both settled upon the struggling people below.

"Oh, Walter! Walter! We shall be burned," cried his sister.

The boy had never yet neglected his timid sister's cry. He somewhat rudely pushed Linda away and reached across Nan and Inez to seize Grace's hand.

"Pluck up your courage, Sis!" he cried, his voice rising cheerfully above the turmoil. "We'll get out all right."

"But how?" demanded Bess, in great anxiety. "Oh! see those sparks fly!"

"I see," said Nan, trying to speak calmly.

"They're falling right on those poor people—do, do look!" gasped Bess.

There was an open space between the young folks from the Mason house and the crowd that was wedged into the exit at the head of the main aisle. Upon this mob was pouring smoke and sparks. The flames ate up the bunting with which the balcony rail and pillars were decorated. The burning cloth floated down upon the heads of the excited people and threatened to set the dresses of some afire.

Pearl Graves had actually fainted in her seat. Linda lay across her cousin, sobbing and groaning. The rest of their party, whoever they were, had deserted the two girls.

"What under the sun shall we do, Nan?" whispered Walter, and Nan read the words on his lips rather than heard them; for the burning theatre was by this time a scene of pandemonium.



CHAPTER XXX

A FRESH OUTLOOK

Nan had already made up her mind what they must do. Despite the spread of the fire—and the heat of the flames already scorched their faces—she saw there was no escape for them by the front door of the building. And the chair-backs shut them off from the side exit.

"Get over the seat-back, Walter," Nan commanded. "Haul your sister and Bess over. I can climb over myself and take little Inez with me."

"Don't leave us to burn up!" shrieked Linda, wildly, starting up again. Her ears were keen enough.

"Pearl Graves has fainted," Walter said, hesitatingly.

"If we could only break down these seat-backs," cried Nan. "There are four rows between us and the side aisle."

"We can break them down," responded Walter, and immediately flung his weight against the back of the chair in which he had been sitting, glad to have some line of positive action suggested to him.

The boy's second attempt broke the back of the seat short off; it was built none too strong. He leaped over into the next row and quickly smashed his way through that.

"Come on, girls! I'll get you out," he cried, more cheerfully.

His sister and Bess climbed through the first aperture. Nan lifted Inez through and was about to follow, when Linda seized upon her jacket.

"You let me get out, Nan Sherwood!" she commanded, trying to pull Nan back.

"There is room enough—and time enough," panted Nan, resisting. "I must look after Inez."

"Let that young one go with Bess and Grace," Linda said. "Somebody's got to help me with Pearl. The silly has fainted."

Nan saw that this was so. She adjured Bess to take care of Inez.

"Hi! I don't need nobody ter take care o' me," cried that independent young lady. "I'm big enough to take care o' myself. You come on, Nan Sherwood."

"I'm coming," promised Nan, slipping back to help with Pearl.

Instantly Linda pushed by and followed the other girls, leaving Nan alone with Pearl Graves. The girl had no intention of helping her cousin.

Walter was smashing one seat-back after another, and calling to the girls to follow. Bess had grabbed up Inez and now only Nan and Pearl were left behind.

The latter was really senseless. Shaking her—patting her hands—rubbing her forehead—all did no good. It seemed impossible for Nan Sherwood to arouse her.

The smoke came down upon them, thick and stifling. The others of her party were shut out of Nan Sherwood's view. She heard them calling to each other, Walter shouting in advance. They thought Nan was coming, too.

Nan was dreadfully tempted to run. She was as frightened as she could be. She had a great terror of fire; ever since her experience with Cousin Tom in the forest fire, she had shuddered at the very thought of flames.

And here the heat of them almost overwhelmed her. The shrieks of the frantic throng at the main door of the theatre died away. She heard the shouted commands of the police and firemen—then the swish of water from the first pipe brought to play upon the flames. But they were all outside.

There was nobody near to help Nan Sherwood. She might easily have escaped by herself; but to leave this helpless girl whom Linda Riggs had abandoned—

Nan could not do that. She seized Pearl Graves by the shoulders and strove to drag her out of that row of seats and into the next. Although the main aide was now clear, she dared not try that way. Fire was raining down from the balcony into the back of the house.

Pearl was a larger and heavier girl than Nan. Strong as the latter was, and well developed from her athletic training, the older girl would have been a heavy charge for Nan at best. Now, with the smoke half smothering her, and Pearl a dead weight in her arms, Nan could scarcely drag her burden to the opening in the row of seats.

She struggled to it, however, and got the girl through the first row of chairs, tearing Pearl's dress sadly in the effort and scratching her own ungloved hands. Nan was crying, too, as she struggled on; she was both frightened and unnerved.

But she stuck to her self-imposed task. She could hear no voices near her now. Nothing but the crackling of the flames and the crash of axes as the firemen wrecked the partition back of the balcony to get at the seat of the fire.

There was nobody to help Nan with her burden. A curtain of smoke shut off the firemen and policemen in the front of the house from the auditorium itself. The smoke grew thicker back there where the young girl struggled to reach the side exit.

Walter Mason and her other friends had escaped. Nan was glad of that. She did not even question why none of them came back to help her.

Nan did not know that the moment they appeared in the side alley, leading back to the rear of the theatre, a policeman with more zeal than good sense hustled them away from the door and would not let even Walter return when he found that Nan and Pearl were not with the party.

"Ye can't go back in there, me laddy-buck," declared the officer. "Is it crazy ye are? Phat's in that the-a-tre will have to stay there, if it can't git out be itself. Orders is ter let nobody inside."

"But something's happened to Nan!" cried Walter. "She and that other girl are perhaps overcome with the smoke. They'll smother!"