PUTTING ONE'S BEST FOOT FORWARD
Amy Gregg's escapade created a lot of excitement at Briarwood Hall.
Inasmuch as it affected Ruth, the whole school was in a flutter about it.
Helen and Ann had come to the Hall, late for breakfast, and spread the
news in the dining hall. They were both sure, by Ruth's actions and the
doctor's first noncommittal report, that Amy had some contagious disease.
Curly had made a deal of the sore throat Amy had confessed to.
"And if that's so," Helen said, almost in tears, "poor Ruth will be
quarantined for weeks."
"Why, Helen, how will she graduate?" gasped Lluella.
"She won't! She can't!" declared Ruth's chum. "It will be dreadful!"
"I say!" cried Jennie, thoroughly alarmed. "We musn't let her stay there
and nurse that young one. Why! what ever would we do if Ruthie Fielding
didn't graduate?"
"The class would be without a head," declared Mercy.
"It would be without a heart, at least--and a great, big one overflowing
with love and tenderness," cried Nettie Parsons, wiping her eyes.
"I don't want any more breakfast," said Jennie, pushing her plate away.
"Don't talk like that, Nettie. You'll get me to crying too. And that
always spoils my digestion."
"If Ruth isn't with us when we get our diplomas, I'm sure I don't want
any!" exclaimed Mary Cox. And she meant it, too. Mary Cox believed that
she owed her brother's life to Ruth Fielding, and although she was not
naturally a demonstrative girl, there was nobody at Briarwood Hall who
admired the girl of the Red Mill more than Mary.
In fact, the threat of disaster to Ruth's graduation plans cast a pall of
gloom over the school. The moving pictures were forgotten; Amy Gregg's
part in the destruction of the West Dormitory ceased to be a topic of
conversation. Was Ruth Fielding going to be held in quarantine? grew to be
a more momentous question than any other.
Ruth, however, was only absent from her accustomed haunts for two days.
The second day she remained to attend the patient because Amy begged so
hard to have her stay.
In her weakness and pain the sullen, secretive girl had turned
instinctively to the one person who had been uniformly gentle and kind to
her throughout all her trouble. Nothing that Amy had done or said, had
turned Ruth from her; and the barriers of girl's nature and of her evil
passions were broken down.
It was not, perhaps, wholly Amy Gregg's fault that her disposition was so
warped. She had received bad advice from some aunts, who had likewise set
the child a bad example in their treatment of Mr. Gregg's second wife,
when he had brought her home to be a mother to Amy.
The poor child suffered so much from the effect of the poison ivy that the
other girls, and not alone those of her own grade, "just _had_ to be sorry
for Amy," as Mary Pease said.
"To think!" said that excitable young girl. "She might even lose her
eyesight if she's not careful. My! it must be dreadful to get poisoned
with that nasty ivy. I'll be afraid to go into the woods the whole
summer."
Of course, it took time for these sentiments to circulate through the
school, and for a better feeling for Amy Gregg to come to the surface; but
the poor girl was laid up for two weeks in Mrs. Sadoc Smith's best
bedroom, and a fortnight is a long time in a girls' boarding school. At
least, it sometimes seems so to the pupils.
What helped change the girls' opinion of Amy, too, was the fact that Mrs.
Tellingham announced in chapel one morning that Mr. Gregg had sent his
check for five hundred dollars toward the rebuilding of the dormitory,
the walls of which now were completed, and the roof on.
She spoke, too, of the reason Amy had left her candle burning in her
lonely room in the old West Dormitory that fatal evening. "We failed in
our duty, both as teachers and fellow-pupils," Mrs. Tellingham said. "I
hope that no other girl who enters Briarwood Hall will ever be neglected
and left alone as Amy Gregg was, no matter what the new comer's
disposition or attitude toward us may be."
To hear the principal take herself to task for lack of foresight and
kindness to a new pupil, made a deep impression upon the school at large,
and when Amy Gregg appeared on the campus again she was welcomed with
gentleness by the other girls. Although Amy Gregg still doubted and shrank
from them for some time, before the end of the term she had her chums, and
was one of a set whose bright, particular star was her one-time enemy,
Mary Pease.
Meanwhile, the older girls--the seniors who were to graduate--had a new
problem. The films for "The Heart of a Schoolgirl" were reported almost
ready. Mr. Hammond was to release them as soon as he could, in order to
bring all the aid to the dormitory fund possible before the end of the
semester.
Now the query was, "How is the picture to be advertised?" Merely the
ordinary billing in front of the picture playhouses and on the display
boards, was not enough. An interest must be stirred of a deeper and
broader nature than that which such a casual manner of advertising could
be expected to engender.
"How'll we do it?" demanded Jennie, with as much solemnity as it was
possible for her rosy, round face to express. "We should invent some
catch-phrase to introduce the great film--something as effective as 'Good
evening! have you used Higgin's Toothpaste?' or, 'You-must-have-a
pound-cake.' You know, something catchy that will stick in people's
minds."
"It has taken years and years to make some of those catchy trademarks
universal," objected Ruth, seriously. "Our advertising must be done in a
hurry."
"Well, we've got to put our best foot forward, somehow," declared Helen.
"Everybody must be made to know that the Briarwood girls have a show of
their own--a five-reel film that is a corker----"
"Hear! hear!" cried Belle. "Wait till the censor gets hold of _that_
word."
"Quite right," agreed Ruth. "Let us be lady-like, though the heavens
fall!"
"And still be natural?" chuckled Jennie. "Impossible!"
"Her best foot forward--one's best foot forward." Mary Cox kept repeating
Helen's remark while the other girls chattered. Mary had a talent for
drawing. "Say!" she suddenly exclaimed. "I could make a dandy poster with
that for a text."
"With what for a text?" somebody asked.
"'Putting One's Best Foot Forward,'" declared Mary Cox, and suddenly
seizing charcoal and paper, she sketched the idea quickly--a smartly
dressed up-to-date Briarwood girl with her right foot advanced--and that
foot, as in a foreshortened photograph--of enormous size.
The poster took with the girls immensely. There was something chic about
the figure, and the face, while looking like nobody in particular, was a
composite of several of the girls. At least, it was an inspiration on the
part of Mary Cox, and when Mrs. Tellingham saw it, she approved.
"We'll just send this 'Big Foot Girl' broadcast," cried Helen, who was
proud that her spoken word had been the inspiration for Mary's clever
cartoon. "Come on! we'll have it stamped on our stationery, and write to
everyone we know bespeaking their best attention when they see the poster
in their vicinity."
"And we'll have new postcards made of Briarwood Hall, with Mary's figure
printed on the reverse," Sarah Fish said.
They sent a proof of the poster to Mr. Hammond, and to his billing of
"The Heart of a Schoolgirl" he immediately added "The Briarwood Girl with
Her Best Foot Forward." Locally, during the next few weeks, this poster
became immensely popular.
The campaign of advertising did not end with Mary's poster--no, indeed! In
every way they could think of the girls of Briarwood Hall spread the
tidings of the forthcoming release of the school play.
Lumberton's advertising space was plastered with the Briarwood Girl and
with other billing weeks before the film could be seen. As every moving
picture theatre in the place clamored for the film, Mr. Hammond had
refused to book it with any. The Opera House was engaged for three days
and nights, a high price for tickets asked, and it was expected that a
goodly sum would be raised for the dormitory right at home.
However, before the picture of "The Heart of a Schoolgirl" came to town,
something else happened in the career of Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill
which greatly influenced her future.