Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Cori Samuel and the
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The
Moving Picture Girls
OR
First Appearances in Photo Dramas
BY
LAURA LEE HOPE
AUTHOR OF THE BOBBSEY TWINS, THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE COUNTRY,
THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SNOW LODGE, THE OUTDOOR GIRLS OF DEEPDALE,
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT RAINBOW LAKE, ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
[Illustration: IN ONE SCENE ALICE AND RUTH HOLD THE STAGE ALONE.
_The Moving Picture Girls.--Page 157._]
THE WORLD SYNDICATE PUBLISHING CO.
CLEVELAND NEW YORK
Made in U. S. A.
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY GROSSET & DUNLAP
PRESS OF THE COMMERCIAL BOOKBINDING CO. CLEVELAND
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I AN UNCEREMONIOUS DEPARTURE 1
II RUSS DALWOOD APOLOGIZES 11
III THE OLD TROUBLE 20
IV DESPONDENCY 33
V REPLACED 43
VI A NEW PROPOSITION 51
VII ALICE CHANGES HER MIND 60
VIII "PAY YOUR RENT, OR----" 70
IX MR. DEVERE DECIDES 78
X THE MAN IN THE KITCHEN 87
XI RUSS IS WORRIED 96
XII THE PHOTO DRAMA 106
XIII MR. DEVERE'S SUCCESS 113
XIV AN EMERGENCY 124
XV JEALOUSIES 132
XVI THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS 140
XVII A PROMISE 151
XVIII A HIT 159
XIX A BIT OF OUTDOORS 170
XX FARMER SANDY APGAR 181
XXI OVERHEARD 189
XXII THE WARNING 197
XXIII THE MISSING MODEL 205
XXIV THE PURSUIT 214
XXV THE CAPTURE 221
CHAPTER I
AN UNCEREMONIOUS DEPARTURE
"Oh, isn't it just splendid, Ruth? Don't you feel like singing and
dancing? Come on, let's have a two-step! I'll whistle!"
"Alice! How can you be so--so boisterous?" expostulated the taller of
two girls, who stood in the middle of their small and rather shabby
parlor.
"Boisterous! Weren't you going to say--rude?" laughingly asked the
one who had first spoken. "Come, now, 'fess up! Weren't you?" and the
shorter of the twain, a girl rather plump and pretty, with merry
brown eyes, put her arm about the waist of her sister and endeavored
to lead her through the maze of chairs in the whirl of a dance,
whistling, meanwhile, a joyous strain from one of the latest Broadway
successes.
"Oh, Alice!" came in rather fretful tones. "I don't--"
"You don't know what to make of me? That's it; isn't it, sister mine?
Oh, I can read you like a book. But, Ruth, why aren't you jolly once
in a while? Why always that 'maiden all forlorn' look on your face?
Why that far-away, distant look in your eyes--'Anne, Sister Anne,
dost see anyone approaching?' Talk about Bluebeard! Come on, do one
turn with me. I'm learning the one-step, you know, and it's lovely!
"Come on, laugh and sing! Really, aren't you glad that dad has an
engagement at last? A real engagement that will bring in some real
money! Aren't you glad? It will mean so much to us! Money! Why, I
haven't seen enough real money of late to have a speaking
acquaintance with it. We've been trusted for everything, except
carfare, and it would have come to that pretty soon. Say you're glad,
Ruth!"
The younger girl gave up the attempt to entice her sister into a
dance, and stood facing her, arm still about her waist, the laughing
brown eyes gazing mischievously up into the rather sad blue ones of
the taller girl.
"Glad? Of course I'm glad, Alice DeVere, and you know it. I'm just as
glad as you are that daddy has an engagement. He's waited long enough
for one, goodness knows!"
"You have a queer way of showing your gladness," commented the other
drily, shrugging her shapely shoulders. "Why, I can hardly keep
still. La-la-la-la! La-la-la-la! La-la-la!" She hummed the air of a
Viennese waltz song, meanwhile whirling gracefully about with
extended arms, her dress floating about her balloonwise.
"Oh, Alice! Don't!" objected her sister.
"Can't help it, Ruth. I've just got to dance. La-la!"
She stopped suddenly as a vase crashed to the floor from a table,
shattering into many pieces.
"Oh!" cried Alice, aghast, as she stood looking at the ruin she had
unwittingly wrought. "Oh, dear, and daddy was so fond of that vase!"
"There, you see what you've done!" exclaimed Ruth, who, though only
seventeen, and but two years older than her sister, was of a much
more sedate disposition. "I told you not to dance!"
"You did nothing of the sort, Ruth DeVere. You just stood and looked
at me, and you wouldn't join in, and maybe if you had this wouldn't
have happened--and--and--"
She did not finish, her voice trailing off rather dismally as she
stooped to pick up the pieces of the vase.
"It can't be mended, either," she went on, and when she looked up the
merry brown eyes were veiled in a mist of tears. Ruth's heart
softened at once.
"There, dear!" she said in consoling tones. "Of course you couldn't
help it. Don't worry. Daddy won't mind when you tell him you were
just doing a little waltz of happiness because he has an engagement
at last."
She, too, stooped and her light hair mingled with the dark brown
tresses of her sister as they gathered up the fragments.
"I don't care!" announced Alice, finally, as she sank into a chair.
"I'll tell dad myself. I'm glad, anyhow, even if the vase is broken.
I never liked it. I don't see why dad set such store by the old
thing."
"You forget, Alice, that it was one of--"
"Mother's--yes, I know," and she sighed. "Father gave it to her when
they were married, but really, mother was like me--she never cared
for it."
"Yes, Alice, you are much as mother was," returned Ruth, with gentle
dignity. "You are growing more like her every day."
"Am I, really?" and in delight the younger girl sprang up, her grief
over the vase for the moment forgotten. "Am I really like her, Ruth?
I'm so glad! Tell me more of her. I scarcely remember her. I was only
seven when she died, Ruth."
"Eight, my dear. You were eight years old, but such a tiny little
thing! I could hold you in my arms."
"You couldn't do it now!" laughed Alice, with a downward glance at
her plump figure. Yet she was not over-plump, but with the rounding
curves and graces of coming womanhood.
"Well, I couldn't hold you long," laughed Ruth. "But I wonder what is
keeping daddy? He telephoned that he would come right home. I'm so
anxious to have him tell us all about it!"
"So am I. Probably he had to stay to arrange about rehearsals,"
replied Alice. "What theater did he say he was going to open at?"
"The New Columbia. It's one of the nicest in New York, too."
"Oh, I'm so glad. Now we can go to a play once in a while--I'm almost
starved for the sight of the footlights, and to hear the orchestra
tuning up. And you know, while he had no engagement dad wouldn't let
us take advantage of his professional privilege, and present his card
at the box office."
"Yes, I know he is peculiar that way. But I shall be glad, too, to
attend a play now and again. I'm getting quite rusty. I did so want
to see Maude Adams when she was here. But--"
"I'd never have gone in the dress I had!" broke in Alice. "I want
something pretty to wear; don't you?"
"Of course I do, dear. But with things the way they were--"
"We had to eat our prospective dresses," laughed Alice. "It was like
being shipwrecked, when the sailors have to cut their boots into
lengths and make a stew of them."
"Alice!" cried Ruth, rather shocked.
"It was so!" affirmed the other. "Why, you must have read of it
dozens of times in those novels you're always poring over. The hero
and heroine on a raft--she looks up into his eyes and sighs. 'Have
another morsel of boot soup, darling!' Why, the time dad had to use
the money he had half promised me for that charmeuse, and we bought
the supper at the delicatessen--you know, when Mr. Blake stopped and
you asked him to stay to tea, when there wasn't a thing in the house
to eat--do you remember that?"
"Yes, but I don't see what it has to do with shipwrecked sailors
eating their boots. Really, Alice--"
"Of course it was just the same," explained the younger girl,
merrily. "There was nothing fit to give Mr. Blake, and I took the
money that was to have been paid for my charmeuse, and slipped out to
Mr. Dinkelspatcher's--or whatever his name is--and bought a meal.
Well, we ate my dress, that's all, Ruth."
"Why, Alice!"
"And I wish we had it to eat over again," went on the other, with a
half sigh. "I don't know what we are going to do for supper. How much
have we in the purse?"
"Only a few dollars."
"And we must save that, I suppose, until dad gets some salary, which
won't be for a time yet. And we really ought to celebrate in some
way, now that he's had this bit of good luck! Oh, isn't it just awful
to be poor!"
"Hush, Alice! The neighbors will hear you. The walls of this
apartment house are so terribly thin!"
"I don't care if they do hear. They all know dad hasn't had a
theatrical engagement for ever so long. And they know we haven't any
what you might call--resources--or we wouldn't live here. Of course
they know we're poor--that's no news!"
"I know, my dear. But you are so--so out-spoken."
"I'm glad of it. Oh, Ruth, when will you ever give up trying to
pretend we are what we are not? You're a dear, nice, sweet, romantic
sister, and some day I hope the Fairy Prince will come riding past on
his milk-white steed--and, say, Ruth, why should a prince always ride
a milk-white steed? There's something that's never been explained.
"All the novels and fairy stories have milk-white steeds for the hero
to prance up on when he rescues the doleful maiden. And if there's
any color that gets dirtier sooner, and makes a horse look most like
a lost hope, it's white. Of course I know they can keep a circus
horse milk-white, but it isn't practical for princes or heroes. The
first mud puddle he splashed through--And, oh, say! If the prince
should fail in his fortunes later, and have to hire out to drive a
coal wagon! Wouldn't his milk-white steed look sweet then? There goes
one now," and she pointed out of the window to the street below.
"Do, Ruth, if your prince comes, insist on his changing his steed for
one of sober brown. It will wear better."
"Don't be silly, Alice!"
"Oh, I can't help it. Hark, is that dad's step?"
The two girls listened, turning their heads toward the hall entrance
door.
"No, it's someone over at the Dalwoods'--across the corridor."
The noise in the hallway increased. There were hasty footsteps, and
then rather loud voices.
"I tell you I won't have anything to do with you, and you needn't
come sneaking around here any more. I'm done with you!"
"That's Russ," whispered Alice.
"Yes," agreed Ruth, and her sister noted a slight flush on her fair
cheeks.
Then came a voice in expostulation:
"But I tell you I can market it for you, and get you something for
it. If you try to go it alone--"
"Well, that's just what I'm going to do--go it alone, and I don't
want to hear any more from you. Now you get out!"
"But look here--"
There was a sound of a scuffle, and a body crashed up against the
door of the DeVere apartment.
"Oh!" cried Ruth and Alice together.
Their door swung open, for someone had seemingly caught at the knob
to save himself from falling. The girls had a glimpse of their
neighbor across the hall, Russ Dalwood by name, pushing a strange man
toward the head of the stairs.
"Now you get out!" cried Russ, and the man left rather
unceremoniously, slipping down two or three steps before he could
recover his balance and grasp the railing.
"Oh, shut the door, quickly, Alice!" gasped Ruth.