looks at a dream book every
morning to see what each dream means. How funny!"

"Goodness!" cried Bess. "Come to think of it, I had the strangest dream
last night. I dreamed that I saw myself in the looking-glass and my
reflection stepped right out and began to talk to me. We sat down and
talked. It was so funny--just as though I were twins."

"What an imagination!" exclaimed Walter. "You don't lack anything in that
particular, for sure."

"Well," declared Bess, "I want to know what it means."

"I can make a pretty close guess," said Nan, shrewdly.

"'_Vell, vas ist_?' as our good Frau Deuseldorf says when she gets
impatient with our slowness in acquiring her beloved German."

"It means," declared Nan, "that a combination of French pancake with
peach marmalade, on top of chicken salad and mayonnaise, is not conducive
to dreamless slumber. If you dreamt you met yourself on Grand Avenue
parading at the head of a procession of Elizabeth Harleys, after such a
dinner as you ate last night, I shouldn't be surprised."

"Carping critic!" exclaimed Bess, pouting. "_Do_ let me eat what I like
while I'm here. When we get back to Lakeview Hall you know Mrs. Cupp will
want to put us all on half rations to counteract our holiday eating. I
heard her bemoaning the fact to Dr. Beulah that we would come back with
our stomachs so full that we would be unable to study for a fortnight."

"My! she is a Tartar, isn't she?" was Walter's comment.

"Oh, you don't know what we girls have to go through with at the
Hall--what trials and privations," said his sister, feelingly.

"I can see it's making you thin, Sis," scoffed the boy. "And how about
all those midnight suppers, and candy sprees, and the like?"

"Mercy!" exclaimed Bess. "If it were not for those extras we should all
starve to death. There! we've missed that jitney. We'll have to wait
for another."

The girls and their escort got safely to the shabby street in which
Mother Beasley kept her eating and lodging house; but they obtained no
new information regarding the runaway girls who had spent their first
night in Chicago with the poor, but good-hearted widow.

Nor did they find Inez in her accustomed haunts near the railroad
station; and it was too late that day to hunt the little flower-seller's
lodging, for Inez lived in an entirely different part of the town.

"Rather a fruitless chase," Walter said, as they walked from the car on
which they had returned. "What are you