"I never thought of such a thing," Nan innocently replied. "Film companies do not hire girls of my age, do they?"

"Not unless they are wonderfully well adapted for the work," agreed the actress. "But I am approached every week--I was going to say, every day--by girls no older than you, who think they have genius for the film-stage."

"Oh!" exclaimed Nan, beginning at last to take interest in something besides her recent unpleasant experience. "Do _you_ make moving pictures?"

The actress raised her eyes and clasped her hands, invoking invisible spirits to hear. "At last! a girl who is not tainted by the universal craze for the movies--and who does not know _me_! There are still worlds for me to conquer," murmured the woman. "Yes, my child," she added, to the rather abashed Nan, "I am a maker of films."

"You--you must excuse me," Nan hastened to say. "I expect I ought to know all about you; but I lived quite a long time in the Michigan woods, and then, lately, I have been at boarding school, and we have no movies there."

"Your excuses are accepted, my dear," the actress-director said demurely.

"It is refreshing, I a.s.sure you, to meet a girl like you."

"I--I suppose you see so many," Nan said eagerly. "Those looking for positions in your company, I mean. You do not remember them all?"

"Oh, mercy, no, my dear!" drawled the woman. "I see hundreds."

"Two girls I know of have recently come to Chicago looking for positions with moving picture concerns," explained Nan, earnestly. "They are country girls, and their folks want them to come home."

"Runaways?"

"Yes, ma'am. They have run away and their folks are dreadfully worried."

"I a.s.sure you," said the moving picture director, smiling, "they have not been engaged at my studio. New people must furnish references--especially if they chance to be under age. Two girls from the country, you say, my dear? How is it they have come to think they can act for the screen?" and she laughed lightly again.

Nan, sipping her tea and becoming more used to her surroundings and more confidential, told her new acquaintance all about Sallie Morton and Celia Snubbins.

"Dear, dear," the woman observed at last. "How can girls be so foolish? And the city is no place for them, alone, under any circ.u.mstances. If they should come to me I will communicate with their parents. I believe I should know them, my dear--two girls together, and both from the country?"

"Oh! if you only would help them," cried Nan. "I am sure such a kind act would be repaid."

The woman laughed. "I see you have faith in all the old fashioned virtues," she said. "Dear me, girl! I am glad I met you. Tell me how I may communicate with the parents of these missing girls?"

Nan did this; but she appreciated deeply the fact that the actress refrained from asking her any personal questions. After what Linda Riggs had said at the jewelry counter, Nan shrank from telling her name or where she lived to anybody who had heard her enemy.

She parted from the moving picture director with great friendliness, however. As the latter kissed Nan she slipped a tiny engraved card into the girl's hand.

"Some time, when you have nothing better to do, my dear, come to see me," she said. It was not until Nan was by herself again that she learned from the card that she had been the guest of a very famous actress of the legitimate stage who had, as well, become notable as a maker of moving pictures.

The girl's heart was too sore at first, when she met her friends as agreed in an entirely different part of the great store, to say anything about her adventure. But that night, when she and Bess were alone, Nan showed her chum the famous actress' card, and told her how the moving picture director was likewise on the lookout for the two runaway girls.

"Splendid!" cried Bess. "Keep on and we'll have half the people in Chicago watching out for Sallie and Celia. But Nan! You do have the most marvelous way of meeting the most interesting people. Think of it!

Knowing that very famous actress. How did you do it, Nan?"

"Oh! something happened that caused us to speak," Nan said lightly. But she winced at the thought of the unhappy nature of that incident. She was glad that Bess Harley was too sleepy to probe any deeper into the matter.

CHAPTER XIX

HOW THEY LOOKED ON THE SCREEN

Nan did not forget Inez, the flower-girl, nor the fact that the runaways--Sallie Morton and Celia Snubbins--might still be traced through Mother Beasley's cheap lodging house.

Both Walter and Grace Mason had been interested, as well as amused, in the chum's account of their first adventure in Chicago. The brother and sister who lived so far away from the squalor of Mother Beasley's and who knew nothing of the toil and shifts of the flower-seller's existence, were deeply moved by the recital of what Nan and Bess had observed.

"That poor little thing!" Grace said. "On the street in all weathers to sell posies--and for a drunken woman. Isn't it awful? Something should be done about it. I'll tell father."

"And he'd report the case to the Society," said her brother, promptly.

"Father believes all charity should be done through organizations.

'Organized effort' is his hobby," added Walter, ruefully. "He says I lack proper appreciation of its value."

"But if he told the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children about Inez, they would take her and put her in some inst.i.tution,"

objected Nan.

"And put a uniform on her like a prisoner," cried Bess. "And make her obey rules like--like us boarding school girls. Oh, dear!"

The others laughed at that.

"Oh, you girls!" said Walter. "To hear you talk, one would think you were hounded like slaves at Lakeview Hall. You should have such a strict teacher as my tutor, for instance. He's the fellow for driving one. He says he'll have me ready for college in two years; but if he does, I know I shall feel as stuffed as a Strasburg goose."

"This learning so much that one will be glad to forget when one grows up," sighed Bess, "is an awful waste of time."

"Why, Bess!" cried Grace Mason, "don't you ever expect to read or write or spell or cipher when you grow up?"

"No more than I can help," declared the reckless Elizabeth.

"And yet you've always talked about our going to college together," said Nan, laughing at her chum.

"But college girls never have to use what they learn--except fudge-making and dancing, and--and--well, the things that aren't supposed to be in the curriculum," declared Bess.

"Treason! treason!" said Nan. "How dare you, Elizabeth? Pray what _do_ girls go through college for?"

"To fit themselves for the marriage state," declared Bess. "My mother went to college and she says that every girl in her graduating cla.s.s was married inside of five years--even the homely ones. You see, the homely ones make such perfectly splendid professors' wives. There's even a chance for Procrastination Boggs, you see."

"You ridiculous girl!" Nan said. "Come on! Who's going down town with me?

I can find my way around now, for I have studied a map of Chicago and I can go by the most direct route to Mother Beasley's."

"And find that cunning little Inez, too?" asked Grace.

"Yes. If I want to. But to-day I want to go to see if Sallie and Celia went back to Mrs. Beasley's. I heard from Sallie's mother by this morning's post, and the poor woman is dreadfully worked up about the runaways. Mrs. Morton had a bad dream about Sallie, and the poor woman believes in dreams."

"She does!" exclaimed Grace. "I suppose she looks at a dream book every morning to see what each dream means. How funny!"

"Goodness!" cried Bess. "Come to think of it, I had the strangest dream last night. I dreamed that I saw myself in the looking-gla.s.s and my reflection stepped right out and began to talk to me. We sat down and talked. It was so funny--just as though I were twins."

"What an imagination!" exclaimed Walter. "You don't lack anything in that particular, for sure."