TWO IN TROUBLE
Ralph knew that Sister could put queer ideas into Brother's head, and
he hoped that the fun of going downtown, and buying ice-cream soda at
the drug store, might cause Sister to forget whatever she had in mind.
When he came home from his tennis game he found both children playing
in the sandbox, and as they were very good the rest of that afternoon
and evening and all day Sunday, Ralph decided that Sister was not going
to be naughty or get Brother to help her to do anything she should not.
Monday evening Mother and Daddy Morrison went through the hedge into
Dr. Yarrow's house to visit the doctor and his wife. Brother and Sister
were told to run in and visit Grandmother Hastings until eight o'clock,
their bedtime.
"Can we take Brownie?" begged Sister. "Grandmother says he is the
nicest dog!"
So Brownie, who was now three times the size he had been when Ralph
brought him home in the basket, was allowed to go calling, too.
"Grandma," said Sister, when Grandmother Hastings had answered their
knock on her screen door, and had hugged and kissed them both.
"Grandma, couldn't we go to the movies?"
Now Grandmother Hastings was a darling grandmother who loved to do
whatever her grandchildren asked of her. It never entered her dear head
that Mother Morrison might not wish Brother and Sister to go to the
movies at night. She only thought how they would enjoy the pictures,
and although she disliked going out at night herself, she said that she
would take Brother and Sister.
"We can't go downtown to the Majestic," she said, "for that is too far
for me to walk. We'll have to go over to the nice little theatre on
Dollmer Avenue. If we go right away, we can be home early."
Sister lagged a little behind her grandmother and brother as they
started for the theatre. She was stuffing Brownie into her roomy middy
blouse. He was rather a large puppy to squeeze into such a place, but
Sister managed it somehow. Grandmother Hastings supposed that the dog
had been left on the porch.
The theatre was dark, for the pictures were being shown on the screen
when they reached it, and Grandmother Hastings had to feel her way down
the aisle, Brother and Sister clinging to her skirts. The electric fans
were going, but it was warm and close, and Grandmother wished longingly
for her own cool parlor. But Brother and Sister thought everything
about the movie theatre beautiful.
"Do you suppose Brownie likes it?" whispered Brother, who sat next to
Sister. Grandmother was on his other side.
"He feels kind of hot," admitted Sister, who could not have been very
comfortable with the heavy dog inside her blouse. "But I think he likes
it."
Brownie had his head stuck halfway out, and he probably wondered where
he was. It was so dark that there was little danger of anyone
discovering him. A dog in a motion-picture house is about as popular,
you know, as Mary's lamb was in school. That is, he isn't popular at
all.
Brownie might have gone to the movies and gone home again without
anyone ever having been the wiser, if there had not been a film shown
that night that no regular dog could look at and not bark.
"Oh, look at the big cat!" whispered Sister excitedly.
Surely enough, a large cat sat on the fence, and, as they watched, a
huge collie dog, with a beautiful plumy tail, came marching around the
corner.
He spied the cat and dashed for her. She began to run, on the screen,
of course. The audience in the movie house began to laugh, for the dog
in his first jump had upset a bucket of paint. The people in the
theatre were sure they were going to see a funny picture.
But Brownie had seen the cat, too. He knew cats, and there were many in
his neighborhood he meant to chase as soon as he was old enough to make
them afraid of him. He scratched vigorously on Sister's blouse and
whined.
"Ki-yi!" he yelped, as though saying: "Ki-yi! I'll bet I could catch
that cat!"
Barking shrilly, he scrambled out from Sister's middy, shook himself
free of her arms, and tore down the aisle of the theatre, intent on
catching the fluffy cat.
"Ki-yi!" he continued to call joyously.
"Brownie! Here, Brownie!" called Sister frantically. "Brownie, come
back here!"
The theatre was in an uproar in a minute. Ladies began to shriek that
the dog was mad, and some of them stood upon the seats and cried out.
The men who tried to catch Brownie only made him bark more, and the
louder he barked the more the ladies shrieked. Finally they stopped the
picture and turned on the lights.
"Rhodes and Elizabeth Morrison!" said someone sternly. "What are you
doing here?"
There, across the aisle from Grandmother Hastings and Brother and
Sister, sat Daddy and Mother Morrison with Dr. and Mrs. Yarrow. They
had come to the movies, too!
"Is that dog Brownie?" asked Daddy Morrison, coming over to them.
Everyone had left his seat and the aisle was in confusion; people
talking and arguing and advising one another.
Sister nodded miserably. She felt very small and unhappy.
"Rhodes, go down and get Brownie at once!" commanded Daddy Morrison.
When they were naughty, Brother and Sister were always called by their
"truly" names, you see.
"I'll go get him," gulped Sister. "I brought him--Roddy didn't want me
to."
Brownie came willingly enough to Sister and she gathered him up in her
arms. He may have wondered, in his doggie mind, what all the fuss was
about and what had become of the fluffy cat, but he was getting used to
having his fun abruptly ended.
"I didn't know you brought the dog, dear," said Grandmother Hastings,
breaking a grim silence as they walked home. "And did you know Mother
wasn't willing to have you go at night when you asked me to take you?"
Poor little Sister had to confess that she had asked Grandmother to
take them because she knew that in no other way could they get to the
movies at night. Grandmother Hastings never scolded, but her
grandchildren hated to know that she was disappointed in them.
No one scolded Brother and Sister very much that night. They were put
to bed, and the next morning Daddy Morrison called them into his "den"
before he left for the office, and told them that for a week they could
not go out of their own yard.
"And I s'pose we can't go with Ralph Saturday," wailed Sister.