by A. A. Milne
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.
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 apoplect
ic 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.”