"Goodness me!" sighed Mrs. Mason. "I shall be afraid to have you young folk out of my sight for the remainder of this vacation. What scrapes you manage to get into!"
These busy winter holidays were drawing to a close, however. Grace and Walter Mason and their two visitors, as well as all of their neighborhood friends, who had occupied themselves most enjoyably and in a dozen different ways, were now scattering for the latter half of the school year.
Nan did not see Linda Riggs again while she remained in Chicago. Immediately following the fire in the picture theatre, the railroad president's daughter went home. How she really felt toward Nan, the latter did not know; nor did this uncertainty bother her much.
Now that her father's trouble with Mr. Ravell Bulson was cleared up, Nan did not worry over anything but the seemingly total disappearance of the runaways, Sallie and Celia or, as they preferred to be known, Lola Montague and Marie Fortesque.
Mr. Sherwood was still in town to settle matters with the automobile company, and would return to Tillbury with Nan and Bess and Inez. Walter and Grace tried to crowd into the last forty-eight hours of the chums' stay all the good times possible, and the second night before Nan and Bess were to go home, a masquerade party was arranged at the Mason home. Of course, Mrs. Mason was the chief "patroness" of the affair and superintended the arrangements herself. So it was bound to be a success.
Nan needed some ribbons and a new pair of gloves at the last minute, and she ran out to get them herself. Trying shop after shop, just as the street lights were beginning to glimmer, she wandered some blocks away from the Mason house.
She reached a corner where there was a brilliantly lighted bakery beside a narrow and dark alley. Nan was looking for a shop where gloves were sold, not for a bakery; but some people coming out of the shop jostled her. She did not give the little group a second glance as they set off on their several ways from the bakeshop door.
Suddenly, she heard a voice say: "Oh, Sallie! they smell so good. I am as hungry as I can be."
Nan fairly jumped. She wheeled quickly to see two girls—one quite tall and pretty, after a fashion—standing with a bag of cakes between them. The tall girl opened it while the shorter peered in hungrily.
"Goodness! Can it be—?"