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

“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—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.”

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.