"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.