"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."
CHAPTER XXVIII
WHAT HAPPENED TO INEZ
Walter, who had gone downstairs to wait after he had brought the doctor, had a long wait in the cold court at the door of the lodging house in which Jennie Albert lived. A less patient and good-natured boy would have been angry when his sister and her school chums finally appeared.
He was glad that Grace took an interest in anything besides her own pleasure and comfort. His sister, Walter thought, was too much inclined to dodge responsibility and everything unpleasant.