An hour later Clara and Dell, half hoping, half fearing to find Jean in such a place, walked into a little shop bearing the sign: “Lizzie Lord. Manicuring.” But as Clara was about to reply to the question, “Nails done, lady?” she suddenly stepped back and whispered to Dell:
“I’ll bet Jean’s here under an assumed name. That’s why she asked me not to call her name out.” She turned to the desk again. “Is that—that young lady with the light hair here?”
“Miss Miller, you mean?”
Clara hesitated. Some one, evidently Lizzie Lord, called from behind a screen: “No, that girl ain’t here no more; she quit us last night.”
At this the two girls started reluctantly to leave, when the proprietress, a terrible blonde, emerged to add tartly: “Hold on. We got plenty o’ girls can beat Miss Miller manicuring—she wa’n’t only a beginner, anyways. Set down; you won’t have to wait but a minute.”
Clara timidly explained that she wanted only her friend’s address. But “Maggie Miller” had left no address in the shop. The proprietress didn’t know it. Never had known it. She waddled back behind the screen.
“Maggie Miller!” exclaimed Clara, as the girls left. “Oh, I can’t bear to think what that must mean! It makes me perfectly sick. How in the world are we ever going to find her now?”
Days passed, weeks went by, and still no trace of Jean Caspian. It seemed almost incredible that no one could obtain any news of her even “over in Dell’s room.”
Over in Dell’s room they said, “What a shame that such a talented girl should end so disastrously!” Over in Dell’s room they told interesting anecdotes about her. Ambitious girls, who had hitherto withheld their secret opinions, at last felt that there was no longer danger of her rivalry, and came boldly out of the woods. “Yes, Jean Caspian certainly was a genius.” Time passed, and over in Dell’s room Jean Caspian was now usually referred to in the past tense. Clara Coolwood began to lose hope. She read the papers constantly, fearing each morning to hear of the suicide of Maggie Miller. So the winter drifted by. Newer, more interesting topics were discussed over in Dell’s room.
“They say the marcel is coming back again,” said Dell, one snowy afternoon, as she was entertaining the wife of an actor friend. “Your hair is wonderful, Mrs. Wade. Have you been reckless enough to indulge in the fifty-dollar permanent wave, or is that the transient curl of a day?”