JENNIE ALBERT--AND SOMEBODY ELSE
"Well! what do you know about that?" was Walter's comment, when
he came back to the girls and found them surrounding the hungry
looking little street waif, of whom he had already heard so much
from Nan and Bess.
"We go out to shoot partridges and bring down a crow," he added.
"Goodness! what a hungry looking kid. There's a bakeshop over the way.
Bring her in and see if we can't cure this child of old Father Famine."
Inez looked at Walter askance at first. But when she understood that he
was going to stand treat to coffee and cakes, she grew friendlier.
"Yep, I'm hungry," she admitted. "Ain't I _always_ hungry? M-m--!" as the
shop door opened and she sniffed the odors of coffee and food.
"Do, _do_ hurry and feed the poor little thing," urged Grace, almost in
tears. "Oh! I'm sorry I came with you girls. Hungry! Only think of being
_hungry_, Walter!"
Inez looked at Grace as though she thought she was losing her mind.
"Aw, say," said she, "don't let it worry youse. I'm uster being empty,
_I_ am. And 'specially since me and me aunt had our fallin' out."
"Oh! we know about that, Inez," cried Bess. "We went there to look for
you."
"To me aunt's?" asked Inez, in some excitement.
"Yes," Nan replied.
"Is she a-lookin' for me?" demanded the child with a restless glance at
the door of the shop.
"I don't think she is," Nan said.
"I should say not!" Bess added. "She seems to fairly hate you, child. And
didn't she beat you?"
"Yep. She's the biggest, ye see. She took away all me money and then
burned me basket. That was puttin' me on the fritz for fair, and I went
wild and went for her. This is what I got!"
She dropped the shawl off her head suddenly. There, above the temple and
where the tangled black hair had been cut away, was a long, angry wound.
It was partially healed.
"Oh, my dear!" cried Nan.
Grace fell to crying. Bess grew very angry and threatened all manner of
punishments for the cruel aunt.
"How did she do it?" Walter asked.
"Flat iron," replied the waif, succinctly. "I had the poker. She 'got' me
first. I didn't dare go back, and I thought I'd die that first night."
"Oh, oh!" sobbed Grace. "Out in the cold, too!"
"Yes'm," Inez said, eating and drinking eagerly. "But a nice feller in a
drug store--a night clerk, I guess youse call him--took me in after one
o'clock, an' give me something to eat, and fixed up me head."
"What a kind man!" exclaimed Bess.
"So you see, Inez, there are some kind folks in the world," said Nan,
smiling at the waif. "Some kind ones beside _us_."
"Yep," the child admitted. "But not rich folks like youse."
"Goodness, child!" gasped Grace. "We're not rich."
Inez stared at her with a mouthful poised upon her knife. "Cracky!" she
ejaculated. "What do youse call it? Furs, and fine dresses, and nothin'
ter do but sport around--Hi! if youse girls from Washington Park ain't
rich, what d'ye call it?"
Nan was looking serious again. "I guess the child is right," she said,
with a little sigh. "We _are_ rich. Compared with what _she_ has, we're
as rich as old King Midas."
"For goodness' sake!" cried Bess. "I hope _not_--at least, not in ears."
The others laughed; but Nan added: "I guess we don't realize how well
off we are."
"Hear! hear!" murmured Walter. "Being sure of three meals a day would be
riches to this poor little thing."
"Hi!" ejaculated Inez, still eating greedily. "That'd be _Heaven_,
that would!"
"But do let her finish her story, girls," urged Bess. "Go on, dear. What
happened to you after the kind druggist took you in?"
"I staid all night there," said Inez. "He fixed me a bunk on an old
lounge in the back room. An' next morning a girl I useter see at Mother
Beasley's seen me and brought me over here. She ain't well now and her
money's about run out, I reckon. Say! did youse ever find them two
greenies youse was lookin' for?" she suddenly asked Nan.
"Oh, no! We're looking for them now," Nan replied. "Have you seen
them, Inez?"
"I dunno. I b'lieve my friend may know something about them."
"You mean the girl you are with?" Nan asked.
"Yep."
"Who is she?" asked Bess.
"She's one o' them movin' picture actorines. She does stunts."
"'Stunts'?" repeated Walter, while Nan and Bess looked at each other with
interest. "What sort of 'stunts,' pray?"
"Hard jobs. Risky ones, too. And that last one she went out on she got an
awful cold. Whew! I been expectin' her to cough herself to pieces."
"But what did she do?" repeated the curious Walter.
"Oh, she was out in the country with the X.L.Y. Company. She was playin'
a boy's part--she's as thin as I am, but tall and lanky. Makes up fine as
a boy," said Inez, with some enthusiasm.
"She was supposed to be a boy helpin' some robbers. They put her through
a ventilator into a sleepin' car standin' in the railroad yards. That's
where she got cold," Inez added, "for she had to dress awful light so's
to wiggle through the ventilator winder. It was a cold mornin', an' she
came back ter town 'most dead."
"Where is she now?" asked Walter.
But it was Nan's question which brought out the most surprising response.
"Who is she?" Nan asked the little girl. "What is her name?"
"Jennie Albert. An' she's a sure 'nough movie girl, too. But she can't
get good jobs because she ain't pretty."
"I declare!" exclaimed Bess, finally, after a moment of surprised
silence.
"I know she can't live over there in that big warehouse, and that's
number four hundred and sixteen," said Grace.
"She lives in a house back in a court beside that big one," explained
Inez. "It's four hundred and sixteen _and a half_."
"Then it's only half a house?" suggested Bess Harley.
"I know it can be only _half_ fit to live in," said Walter. "Not many of
these around here are. What are you going to do now, Nan?"
"Inez will take us over and introduce us to Jennie."
"Sure thing!" agreed the waif.
"Tell us, Inez," Nan said. "What can we take in to your friend Jennie?"
"To eat, or comforts of any kind?" cried Grace, opening her purse at
once.
"Hi!" cried Inez. "Jest look around. Anything youse see. _She ain't got
nothin'_."
"Which was awful grammar, but the most illuminating sentence I ever
heard," declared Bess, afterward.
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, hoarsely.
"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 assurance. "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 embarrassment.
"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 assumed, 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 nobody worry over what become of me 'fore this. Seems like it's
somethin' new."