_dare_?" cried Bess.

"Why not? Come on! We don't want to spend all our money in taxi fares.
Let's go over there and ask that car man who seems to be bossing the
conductors and motormen."

The girls, with their handbags, started across the great square before
the station. Almost at once they found themselves in a tangle of
vehicular traffic that quite confused Bess, and even troubled the
cooler-headed Nan.

"Oh, Nan! I'm scared!" cried her chum, clinging with her free hand to
Nan's arm.

"For pity's sake, don't be foolish!" commanded Nan. "You'll get me
excited, too--Oh!"

An automobile swept past, so near the two girls that the step brushed
their garments. Bess almost swooned. Nan wished with all her heart that
they had not so recklessly left the sidewalk.

Suddenly a shrill voice cried at her elbow: "Hi, greeny! you look out,
now, or one of these horses will take a bite out o' you. My! but you're
the green goods, for fair."

Nan turned to look, expecting to find a saucy street boy; but the owner
of the voice was a girl. She was dirty-faced, undersized, poorly dressed,
and ill-nourished. But she was absolutely independent, and stood there in
the crowded square with all the assurance of a traffic policeman.

"Come on, greenies," urged this strange little mortal (she could not have
been ten years old), "and I'll beau you over the crossing myself.
Something'll happen to you if you take root here."

She carried in a basket on her arm a few tiny bunches of stale violets,
each bunch wrapped in waxed paper to keep it from the frost. Nan had seen
dozens of these little flower-sellers of both sexes on the street when
she had passed through Chicago with her Uncle Henry the winter before.

"Oh, let's go with her," cried the quite subdued Bess. "Do, Nan!"

It seemed rather odd for these two well-dressed and well-grown girls to
be convoyed by such a "hop-o'-my-thumb" as the flower-seller. But the
latter got Nan and Bess to an "isle of safety" in a hurry, and would then
have darted away into the crowd without waiting to be thanked, had not
Nan seized the handle of her basket.

"Wait!" she cried. "Don't run away."

"Hey!" said the flower-seller, "I ain't got time to stop and chin-chin. I
got these posies to sell."

"Sell us two," Nan commanded. "Wait!"

"Aw right. 'F you say so," said the small girl. "Fifteen a bunch," she
added quickly, shrewdly increasing by a nickel the regular price of the
stale boutonnieres.