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

“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.