"Wait, madam! wait, madam! wait!" he reiterated. "It is here—it is here!"
"What is the matter with you, pray?" asked the woman, curiously. "Have you taken leave of your senses? Why don't you stand still?"
"The lavalliére!" gasped the man and, reaching suddenly, he plucked the dangling chain from an entangling frog on her fur garment. "Here it is, madam!" he cried, with immense satisfaction.
"Now, fancy!" drawled the woman.
Linda slipped out of sight behind some other people. Nan felt faint—just as though she would drop. The clerk and the detective were lavish in their apologies to Nan. As for the woman whose garment had been the cause of all the trouble, she merely laughed.
"Fancy!" she said, in her low, pleasant drawl. "Just fancy! had I not chanced to be known to you, and a customer of the store, I might have been marched up to the superintendent's office myself. It really is a wonderfully good situation for a film—a real moving picture scene made to order."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE RUNAWAYS AGAIN
Nan was ordinarily brave enough. But the disgrace of this scene—in which the fashionably attired woman merely saw the dramatic possibilities—well nigh broke the girl's spirit. If she moved from this place she feared the whispering people would follow her; if she remained, they would remain to gape and wonder.
The troubled girl glanced hurriedly around. Was there no escape? Suppose her chum and Mrs. Mason and Grace should appear, searching for her?