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, hoa.r.s.ely.

"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 a.s.surance. "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 embarra.s.sment.

"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--_those_ girls? I remember them, of course," she said. "I supposed those names were a.s.sumed, but I had no idea 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 n.o.body worry over what become of me 'fore this. Seems like it's somethin' new."

CHAPTER XXVIII