Hesba Stretton - The Ultimate Christmas Library - 100+ Authors, 200 Novels, Novellas, Stories, Poems and Carols

“An’ you?” asked the flower-seller of Nan.

“I always like the sunny-side of everything,” our Nan admitted.

“Hi, Mother Beasley!” shouted Inez, to the woman in the kitchen. “Two of them eggs sunny-side up, flop the other.”

Nan burst out laughing again at this. Bess was too funny for anything— to look at!

There were other girls in the long room, but none near where Nan and Bess and their strange little friend sat. Plainly the strangers were working girls, somewhat older than the chums, and as they finished their late dinners, one by one, they went out. Some wore cheap finery, but most of them showed the shabby hall-mark of poverty in their garments.

By and by the steaming food appeared. Inez had been helping herself liberally to bread and butter and the first thing Mother Beasley did was to remove the latter out of the flower-seller’s reach.

“It’s gone up two cents a pound,” she said plaintively. “But if it was a dollar a pound some o’ you girls would never have no pity on neither the bread nor the butter.”

The stew really smelled good. Even Bess tried it with less doubt. Inez ate as though she had fasted for a week and never expected to eat again.

“Will you have coffee, dearies?” asked Mother Beasley.

“Three cents apiece extry,” said Inez, hoarsely.

“Yes, please,” Nan said. “And if there is pie, we will have pie.”

“Oh, you pie!” croaked Inez, aghast at such recklessness. “I reckon you do ’blong up to Washington Park.”

Nan had to laugh again at this, and even Bess grew less embarrassed. When Mrs. Beasley came back with the coffee and pie, Nan drew her into conversation.

“Inez, here, says she introduced two other girls from the country to your home a few days ago,” said Nan. “Two girls who were looking for jobs with the movies.”

“Were they?” asked Mrs. Beasley, placidly. “My girls are always looking for jobs. When they get ’em, if they are good jobs, they go to live where the accommodations are better. I do the best I can for ’em; but I only accommodate poor girls.”

“And I think you really must do a great deal of good, in your way, Mrs. Beasley,” Nan declared. “Did these two we speak of chance to stay with you until now?”

“I was thinkin’,” said Mrs. Beasley. “I know, now, the ones you mean. Yes, Inez did bring ’em. But they only stayed one night. They wus used to real milk, and real butter, and strictly fresh eggs, and feather beds. They was real nice about it; but I showed ’em how I couldn’t give ’em live-geese feather beds an’ only charge ’em a dollar apiece a week for their lodgin’s.

“They had money— or ‘peared to have. And they heard the movin’ picture studios were all on the other side of town. So they went away.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Bess.

“Well, they were all right at that time. I’ll write and tell Mrs. Morton,” Nan said.

“Did they tell you their names, Mrs. Beasley?” she asked.

“Bless you! if they did, I don’t remember. I have twenty-five girls all the time and lots of ’em only stay a few nights. I couldn’t begin to keep track of ’em, or remember their names.”

This was all the information the chums could get from Mrs. Beasley regarding the girls whom Nan and Bess believed to be the runaways. A little later they went out with Inez, the latter evidently filled to repletion.

“Hi! but that was a feed! You girls must be millionaires’ daughters, like the newspapers tell about,” said the street girl.

“Oh, no, we’re not,” Nan cried.

“Well, you better be joggin’ along toward Washington Park. I don’t want youse should get robbed while I’m with you. Mebbe the police’d think I done it.”

“If you will put us on the car that goes near this address,” said Nan, seriously, showing Inez Walter Mason’s card, “we’ll be awfully obliged.”

Inez squinted at the address. “I kin do better’n that,” she declared. “I’ll put youse in a jitney that’ll drop ye right at the corner of the street— half a block away.”

“Oh! a jitney!” Bess cried. “Of course.”

Inez marched them a couple of blocks and there, on a busy corner, hailed the auto-buss. Before this Nan had quietly obtained from the child her home address and the name of her aunt.

“In you go,” said the flower-seller. Then she shouted importantly to the ’bus-driver: “I got your number, mister! You see’t these ladies gets off at their street or you’ll get deep into trouble. Hear me?”

“Sure, Miss! Thank ye kindly, Miss,” said the chauffeur, saluting, with a grin, and the jitney staggered on over the frozen snow and ice of the street.

They came to the Mason house, safe and sound. An important-looking man in a tail coat and an imposing shirt-front let the girls into the great house.

“Yes, Miss,” he said, in answer to Nan’s inquiry. “There must have been some mistake, Miss. Miss Grace and Mister Walter went to the station to meet you, and returned long ago. I will tell them you have arrived.”

He turned away in a stately manner, and Bess whispered: “I feel just as countrified as that little thing said we looked.”

Nan was looking about the reception room and contrasting its tasteful richness with Mother Beasley’s place.

Grace’s home was a beautiful, great house, bigger than the Harley’s at Tillbury, and Nan Sherwood was impressed by its magnificence and by the spacious rooms. Her term at Lakeview Hall had made Nan much more conversant with luxury than she had been before. At home in the little cottage on the by-street, although love dwelt there, the Sherwoods had never lived extravagantly in any particular. Mrs. Sherwood’s long invalidism had eaten up the greater part of Mr. Sherwood’s salary when he worked in the Atwater Mills; and now that Mrs. Sherwood’s legacy from her great uncle, Hugh Blake of Emberon, was partly tied up in the Scotch courts, the Sherwoods would continue to limit their expenditures.

At Mrs. Sherwood’s urgent request, her husband was going into the automobile business. A part of the money they had brought back from Scotland had already been used in fitting up a handsome showroom and garage on the main street of Tillbury; and some other heavy expenses had fallen upon Mr. Sherwood, for which he would, however, be recompensed by the sale of the first few cars.

If Ravell Bulson injured Mr. Sherwood’s business reputation by his wild charges, or if the company Mr. Sherwood expected to represent, heard of the trouble, much harm might be done. The automobile manufacturing company might even refuse to allow their cars to be handled by Mr. Sherwood— which was quite within their rights, according to the contract which had been signed between them.

Enough of this, however. Nan and Bess Harley were established with Grace Mason, in Chicago, expecting to have a fine time. Nan tried to put all home troubles off her mind.

The girls occupied a beautiful large suite together on the third floor, with a bath all their own, and a maid to wait upon them. Grace was used to this; but she was a very simple-minded girl, and the presence of a tidy, be-aproned and be-capped maid not much older than herself, did not particularly impress Grace one way or another.

“I feel like a queen,” Bess confessed, luxuriously. “I can say: ’Do thus and so,’ and ’tis done. I might say: ‘Off with his head!’ if one of my subjects displeased me, and he would be guillotined before you could wink an eye.”

“How horrid!” said Grace, the shy. “I never could feel that way.”

“It would never do for Elizabeth to be a grand vizer, or sultan, or satrap,” Nan remarked laughingly.