“Only that this woman—her name was Mrs. Ferguson, I remember, and she lived at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel—promised Miss Detweiler a job. So perhaps everything is all right now.”
“I hope so!” exclaimed Mary Louise fervently. And thanking the woman profusely she left the office and the store.
But she had her misgivings. If everything had turned out all right, why hadn’t Margaret written to her grandparents? Who was this Mrs. Ferguson, and why had she done this kindness for an unknown girl? Mary Louise meant to find out, if she could.
She inquired her way to the Benjamin Franklin Hotel and asked at the desk for Mrs. Ferguson. But she was informed that no such person lived there.
“Would you have last year’s register?” she asked timidly. She hated to put everybody to so much trouble.
The clerk smiled: nobody could resist Mary Louise.
“I’ll get it for you,” he said.
After a good deal of searching she found a Mrs. H. R. Ferguson registered at the hotel on the twenty-third of the previous December, with only the indefinite address of Chicago, Illinois, after her name. Margaret Detweiler did not appear in the book at all: evidently she had never stayed at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel.
With a sigh of disappointment, Mary Louise thanked the clerk and left. Nothing had been gained by that visit.
“It must be lunch time,” she decided, after glancing in vain at her wrist, where she was accustomed to wear her watch. “I guess I’ll go back to the house.”