THE RUNAWAYS AGAIN
Nan was ordinarily brave enough. But the disgrace of this scene--in which
the fashionably attired woman merely saw the dramatic possibilities--well
nigh broke the girl's spirit. If she moved from this place she feared the
whispering people would follow her; if she remained, they would remain to
gape and wonder.
The troubled girl glanced hurriedly around. Was there no escape? Suppose
her chum and Mrs. Mason and Grace should appear, searching for her?
The floodgates of her tears were all but raised when the placid woman who
had caused all the trouble turned suddenly to her.
"I _do_ owe an apology to you, my dear," she said. "I see you feel very
badly about it. Don't. It really is not worth thinking of. You evidently
have a spiteful enemy in that girl who has run away. But, of course, my
dear, such unfounded accusations have no weight in the minds of sensible
people." She seemed quite to have forgotten that hers was the first
accusation.
She glanced about disdainfully upon the group of whispering women and
girls. Some of them quite evidently recognized her. How could they help
it, when her features were so frequently pictured on the screen? But Nan
had not identified this woman with the great actress-director, whose
films were being talked of from ocean to ocean.
"Come, my dear," she said. "We can find a quieter place to talk, I know.
And I _do_ wish to know you better."
Whether it were unwise or not, Nan Sherwood found it impossible to
refuse the request of so beautiful a woman. Nan immediately fell under
the charm of her beauty and her voice. She went with her dumbly and
forgot the unpleasant people who stood about and stared. The lovely
woman's light hand upon her arm, too, took away the memory of the
detective's stern grasp.
The actress led her to the nearest elevator where a coin slipped into
the palm of the elevator man caused him to shoot them up to another
floor without delay. In this way all the curious ones lost trace of Nan
and her new friend. In a few moments they were sitting in one of the
tea-rooms where a white-aproned maid served them with tea and sweets at
Madam's command.
"That is what you need, my dear," said Nan's host. "Our unfailing
nerve-reviver and satisfier--tea. What would our sex do without it? And
how do we manage to keep our complexions as we do, and still imbibe
hogsheads of tea?"
She laughed and pinched Nan's cheek. "You have a splendid complexion
yourself, child. And there's quite some film-charm in your features, I
can see. Of course, you have never posed?"
"For moving pictures?" gasped Nan, at last waking up to what the woman
meant. "Oh, no, indeed!"
"You are not like most other young girls, then?" said the woman. "You
haven't the craze to act in the silent drama?"
"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 assure 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 assure 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
circumstances. 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.