"You'd have heard it all before, if you'd listened to some of Dr. Beulah's lectures in the classroom," Nan said. "But we're far off the subject of Inez. I wish we could find her; but there seems no way."
"Oh, Nan! are you sure? Put on your thinking-cap," begged Bess.
"I have thought," her chum replied. "I thought of trying to trace her through the people who sell flowers to her. I asked Mrs. Beasley, and she told me that the flowers Inez sells come from the hotels and big restaurants where they have been on the tables over night. They are sorted and sold cheap to street pedlers like Inez. Hundreds of little ragamuffins buy and hawk these bouquets about the streets. The men who handle the trade would not be likely to remember one little girl.
"Besides," added Nan, smiling sadly. "Inez is a bankrupt. She is out of business altogether. The few pennies she saved back every day—rain or shine, whether she went hungry, or was fed—was her capital; and that her aunt took away. I'm dreadfully worried about the poor thing," concluded Nan, with moist eyes.
She felt so bad about it that she could not bring herself to join the matinée party that had been arranged by Grace for that afternoon. Some of the girls were going to have a box at a musical comedy, with Miss Hagford as chaperon.
Nan did not plead a headache; indeed, she was not given to white lies. She wished to call on the lovely actress whom she had met the day of her adventure in the department store. She wanted to inquire if she had seen or heard anything of the runaways, Sallie and Celia.
"I'd dearly love to go with you," Bess observed. "Just think of your knowing such a famous woman. You have all the luck, Nan Sherwood."
"I'm not sure that it was good fortune that brought me in contact with the lady," Nan returned ruefully.
"Well! it turned out all right, at least," said Bess. "And my escapades never do. I never have any luck. If it rained soup and I was hungry, you know I wouldn't have any spoon."
Nan set forth before the other girls started for the theatre. She knew just how to find the fashionable apartment hotel in which the actress lived, for she and her friends had passed it more than once in the car.