Do hurry and get that taxi."
"What do you suppose your mother will say, Grace?" demanded Bess, in
sudden doubt, when Walter had departed to telephone for the taxi-cab.
"I know mother will pity the poor little soul," Grace declared. "I'm sure
she belongs to enough charitable boards and committees so that she ought
to be delighted that we bring a real 'case,' as she calls them, to her,"
and Grace laughed at her own conceit.
Nan, however, wondered if, after all, Mrs. Mason would care to take any
practical responsibility upon herself regarding the street waif. It was
one thing to be theoretically charitable and an entirely different matter
to take a case of deserving charity into one's own home.
But that thought did not disturb Nan. She had already planned a future
for little Inez. She was determined to take her back to Tillbury and
leave Inez with her mother.
"I'm sure," Nan said to herself, "that Momsey will be glad to have a
little girl around the house again. And Inez can go to school, and
grow to be good and polite. For, goodness knows! she _is_ a little
savage now."
Eventually these dreams of Nan for little Inez came true. Just at
present, however, much more material things happened to her when they
arrived at the Mason house.
Grace and Bess hung over the little girl, and fussed about her, as Walter
laughingly said, "like a couple of hens over one chicken.
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