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."