"And we both owe our escape, I verily believe, to little Inez," Nan said, laughing, and stroking the head of the waif fondly. "The dear little thing came right inside and found us in the smoke. I was almost out of breath."

Pearl was quietly grateful to Nan, however, and she kissed Inez. When she went away in the cab Nan's hand was the last she touched, and Nan knew that she had made a friend for life of Pearl Graves. Nan refused to allow the Masons or Bess to talk of the matter. They all walked home, and by the time they reached the Mason house were all more quiet and able to appear before Mrs. Mason as though nothing extraordinary had happened.

It was not until the next morning at breakfast time, indeed, that Walter's and Grace's parents learned of the fire in the new theatre. Not much damage had been done the house; but several people had been hurt; and the escape of Walter and his party had been really miraculous.

"Goodness me!" sighed Mrs. Mason. "I shall be afraid to have you young folk out of my sight for the remainder of this vacation. What sc.r.a.pes you manage to get into!"

These busy winter holidays were drawing to a close, however. Grace and Walter Mason and their two visitors, as well as all of their neighborhood friends, who had occupied themselves most enjoyably and in a dozen different ways, were now scattering for the latter half of the school year.

Nan did not see Linda Riggs again while she remained in Chicago.

Immediately following the fire in the picture theatre, the railroad president's daughter went home. How she really felt toward Nan, the latter did not know; nor did this uncertainty bother her much.

Now that her father's trouble with Mr. Ravell Bulson was cleared up, Nan did not worry over anything but the seemingly total disappearance of the runaways, Sallie and Celia or, as they preferred to be known, Lola Montague and Marie Fortesque.

Mr. Sherwood was still in town to settle matters with the automobile company, and would return to Tillbury with Nan and Bess and Inez. Walter and Grace tried to crowd into the last forty-eight hours of the chums'

stay all the good times possible, and the second night before Nan and Bess were to go home, a masquerade party was arranged at the Mason home.

Of course, Mrs. Mason was the chief "patroness" of the affair and superintended the arrangements herself. So it was bound to be a success.

Nan needed some ribbons and a new pair of gloves at the last minute, and she ran out to get them herself. Trying shop after shop, just as the street lights were beginning to glimmer, she wandered some blocks away from the Mason house.

She reached a corner where there was a brilliantly lighted bakery beside a narrow and dark alley. Nan was looking for a shop where gloves were sold, not for a bakery; but some people coming out of the shop jostled her. She did not give the little group a second glance as they set off on their several ways from the bakeshop door.

Suddenly, she heard a voice say: "Oh, Sallie! they smell so good. I am as hungry as I can be."

Nan fairly jumped. She wheeled quickly to see two girls--one quite tall and pretty, after a fashion--standing with a bag of cakes between them.

The tall girl opened it while the shorter peered in hungrily.

"Goodness! Can it be--?"

Nan's unspoken question was not completed, for out of the alley darted a street urchin of about Inez's age, who s.n.a.t.c.hed the bag of cakes out of the girl's hand and ran, shrieking, back into the dark alley.

"Oh! the rascal!" gasped the taller of the two girls.

The other burst into tears--and they were very real tears, too! She leaned against the bakery wall, with her arm across her eyes, and sobbed.

"Oh, Marie, don't!" begged the other, with real concern. "Suppose somebody sees you!"

"I don't care if they do. And I _hate_ that name,--Marie!" choked the crying girl, desperately. "I won't answer to it an--any more--so now! I want my own na--name."

"Oh, dear, Celia! don't be a baby."

"I--I don't care if I _am_ a baby. I'm hun--hun--hungry."

"Well, we'll buy some more cakes."

"You can't--you shouldn't," sobbed the other, weakly. "I haven't any more money at all, and you have less than a dollar."

Nan had heard enough. She did not care what these girls thought of her; they should not escape. She planted herself right before the two startled strangers and cried:

"You foolish, foolish things! You are starving for greasy baker's cakes, when your fathers and mothers at home are just sitting down to lovely sliced ham and brown bread and biscuit and homemade preserves and cake--_and plenty of it all_! Sallie Morton and Celia Snubbins, I think you are two of the most foolish girls I ever heard of!"

The crying girl stopped in surprise. The other tried to a.s.sume a very scornful air.

"Haven't you made a mistake, Miss?" she said. "My name is Lola Montague and my friend is Miss Marie Fortesque."

"Sure they are," said the excited Nan. "I know they are your names, for you chose them yourselves. But I was at your house, Sallie Morton, the day of the big blizzard--the very day after you and Celia ran away. And if you'd seen how your mother cried, and how badly your father felt--

"And _your_ mother is worried to death about you, Celia Snubbins; and your father, Si, who is a dear old man, said he'd give everything he owned to get you back--"

"Oh, oh!" gasped Celia, and burst into tears again.

"Listen to this, Sallie Morton!" added Nan, rummaging in her shopping bag and bringing forth Mrs. Morton's letter. She read some of the letter aloud to the girls.

"Now, Sallie, how dare you stay away from a mother like that? You've both just got to come with me. I should think you'd have found out by this time that neither of you will ever be famous as motion picture actresses."

"We have!" gulped Celia, plucking up a little courage. "You know we have, Sallie. That Mr. Gray told us to go back and milk the cows--you know he did!"

Sallie, determined as she was, was softened by her mother's letter. She said: "Well--if they'll have us back, I s'pose we might as well go. But everybody will laugh at us, Celia."

"Let 'em laugh!" cried her friend. "They won't laugh any harder than those folk in that studio did when we tried to act for the movies."

Their experience searching for work at the film studios all over Chicago had taught the two country girls something, at least. They had seen how poor people have to live in the city, and were going back to their country homes with an appreciation of how much better off they were there.

First, however, Nan forgot to buy her gloves; and instead took Sallie and Celia back to the Mason house with her. When she explained the situation to Walter and sent him out to telegraph to Mr. Morton, the boy laughingly nick-named the big Mason home, "The Wayfarers' Inn."

"If you stayed here a month longer, Nan Sherwood, you'd have the house filled with waifs and strays," he declared.

Sallie and Celia that evening divided interest with the masquerade party.

The next day at noon, however, the fathers of the two girls arrived and took them home.

The farmers were grateful--loquaciously so on Mr. Si Snubbins' part--to Mr. and Mrs. Mason for housing the runaways over night; but neither could properly express the feeling he had for Nan Sherwood.

Mrs. Morton did that later in a letter, and Nan keeps that much-read letter to this very day in the secret box in which she locks her medal for bravery. She thinks a great deal more of the letter from the grateful farmer's wife than she does of the Society's medal.

Before Nan Sherwood returned to Tillbury she saw Jennie Albert again, and finally made a special call upon Madam, the famous film actress, to beg that kind, if rather thoughtless, woman, to take the girl under her own special and powerful protection.

Inez went to Tillbury and Mrs. Sherwood welcomed the waif just as Nan knew she would. While Nan was absent at school, her mother would have somebody to run errands and who would be cheerful company for her in "the little dwelling in amity."

So we leave Nan Sherwood, looking toward her second term at Lakeview Hall, and about to renew her a.s.sociation with the girls and instructors there--looking forward, likewise, to hard study, jolly times, and a broadening opportunity for kindly deeds and pleasant adventures in her school life.