OTHER PEOPLE'S WORRIES
Nan had written home quite fully about the presentation of the medal. It
was the first her father and mother had known of the courage she had
displayed so many weeks before in saving the life of the tiny girl at
the Junction.
The fact that some of her fellow passengers had seen the act and
considered it worthy of commemoration, of course, pleased Mr. and Mrs.
Sherwood; but that Nan had been in peril herself on the occasion,
naturally worried her mother.
"I hope you will not go about seeking other adventures, my dear child,"
wrote her mother, with gentle raillery. "What with your announcement of
the presentation of the medal, and Mrs. Mason's enthusiastic letter,
your father and I begin to believe that we have a kind of female knight
errant for a daughter. I am afraid we never shall get our little Nan
back again."
Nan did not really need any bubble of self-importance pricked in this
way. She was humbly thankful to have been able to save the little girl
from the snake, and that the horrid creature had not harmed her, either.
She had hidden the medal away, and would not display it or talk about it.
The thought that her name and her exploit were on the Roll of Honor of
the National Society actually made Nan's ears burn.
She had other worries during these brief winter days--mostly other
people's worries, however. The absolute disappearance of Inez was one;
another was the whereabouts of the two runaway girls, Sallie and Celia,
who should by this time have discovered that they were not destined to be
great motion picture actresses.
Nan had come away from the apartment of her friend, "the Moving Picture
Queen," as Walter called her, that afternoon, with the address of the
studio and a letter to Madam's assistant, Mr. Gray. The next morning, she
and Bess went to the studio to make inquiries about the runaway girls.
They went alone because Grace had much to do before returning to school;
and now their day of departure for Lakeview was close at hand.
"And oh! how I hate to go back to those horrid studies again,"
groaned Bess.
Nan laughed. "What a ridiculous girl you are, Bess Harley," she said.
"You were just crazy to go to Lakeview in the first place."
"Yes! wasn't I?" interposed Bess, gloomily. "But I didn't know I
was crazy."
When once the chums came to the motion picture studio they had no thought
for anything but their errand and the interesting things they saw on
every side. At a high grilled gate a man let them into the courtyard
after a glance at the outside of the letter Nan carried.
"You'll find Mr. Gray inside somewhere," said the gatekeeper. "You'll
have to look for him."
Nan and Bess were timid, and they hesitated for some moments in the paved
yard, uncertain which of the several doors to enter. They saw a number of
girls and men enter through the gate as they had, and watched the men
hurry to one door, and the women and girls to another.
"Lets follow those girls," suggested Bess, as a chattering trio went into
the building. "We can't go far wrong, for the sheep and the goats seem to
be separated," and she giggled.
"Meaning the men from the women?" said Nan. "I guess those doors lead to
the dressing rooms."
She was right in this, for when the two friends stepped doubtfully into a
long, high, white-plastered passage, which was quite empty, but out of
which many doors opened, they heard a confusion of conversation and
laughter from somewhere near.
"What are you going to do?" asked Bess, at once--and as usual--shifting
all responsibility to her chum's shoulders. "Knock at all the doors, one
after the other, until we find somebody who will direct us further?"
"Maybe that would not be a bad idea, Bess," Nan returned. "But--"
Just then a door opened and the confusion of voices burst on the
visitors' ears with startling directness. A girl, dressed as a Gypsy,
gaudy of raiment and bejeweled with brilliantly colored glass beads,
almost ran the chums down as she tried to pull the door to behind her.
The girl's face was painted with heavy shadows and much white, and so
oddly that it looked almost like the make-up for a clown's part.
"Hello, kids. Going in here?" she asked pleasantly enough, refraining
from closing the door entirely.
Nan and Bess obtained a good view of the noisy room. It was lighted by
high windows and a skylight. There were rows of lockers for the girls'
clothes along the blank wall of the room. Through the middle and along
the sides were long tables and stools. The tables were divided into
sections, each of which had its own make-up and toilet outfit.
A mature woman was going about, re-touching many of the girl's faces and
scolding them, as Nan and Bess could hear, for not putting on the grease
paint thick enough.
"That nasty stuff!" gasped Bess, in Nan's ear. "I wouldn't want to put it
on my face."
Right then and there Bess lost all her desire for posing for the
moving picture screen. Nan paid little attention to her, but ran after
the girl who was hurrying through the passage toward the rear of the
great building.
"Oh, wait, please!" cried Nan. "I want to find Mr. Gray--and I know he
can't be in that dressing-room."
"Gray? I should say not," and the girl in costume laughed. Then she saw
the letter in Nan's hand. "Is that for Gray?"
"Yes," Nan replied.
"Come along then. I expect he's been waiting for me for half an hour
now--and believe me, he's just as kind and considerate as a wild bull
when we keep him waiting. I overslept this morning."
It was then after ten o'clock, and Nan wondered how one could
"oversleep" so late.
"I'm only glad Madam isn't going to be here this morning. By the way,"
the girl added, curiously, "who's your letter from? You and your friend
trying to break into the movies?"
"My goodness, no!" gasped Nan. "I have no desire to act--and I'm sure I
have no ability."
"It might be fun," Bess said doubtfully. "But do you all have to paint up
so awfully?"
"Yes. That's so we will look right on the screen. Here! that's Gray--the
bald-headed man in the brown suit. I hope you have better luck than two
girls from the country who were in here for a couple of days. Gray
bounced them yesterday. Who's your letter from?" added the girl,
evidently disbelieving what both Nan and Bess had said when they denied
haying any desire to pose for the screen.
"Madam, herself," said Nan, demurely. "Do you think Mr. Gray will give me
a hearing?"
"Well, I guess yes," cried the girl in costume. "Oh, do give it to him
just as he starts in laying me out, will you?"
"Anything to oblige," Nan said, smiling. "Can we go right over and
speak to him?"
"After me," whispered the girl. "Don't get into any of the 'sets,' or
you'll get a call-down, too."
They had entered an enormous room, half circular in shape, with the roof
and the "flat" side mostly glass. There were countless screens to
graduate the light, and that light was all directed toward the several
small, slightly raised stages, built in rotation along the curved wall of
the studio.
Each of these stages had its own "set" of scenery and was arranged for
scenes. On two, action of scenes was taking place while the energetic
directors were endeavoring to get out of their people the pantomimic
representation of the scenario each had in charge.
One director suddenly clapped his hands and shouted.
"Get this, John! All ready! You dude and cowboy start that scene now. Be
sure you run on at the right cue, Miss Legget. Now, John! Ready boys?"
The representation of a tussle between a cowboy and an exquisitely
dressed Eastern youth, in which comedy bit the so-called dude disarmed
the Westerner and drove him into a corner till his sweetheart bursts in
to protect him from the "wild Easterner," went to a glorious finish.
The camera clicked steadily, the man working it occasionally calling out
the number of feet of blank film left on the spool so that the director
might know whether to hasten or retard the action of the picture.
Nan and Bess stopped, as they were warned by the girl dressed in Gypsy
costume, and watched the proceedings eagerly. Just as the scene came to
an end the bald man in the brown suit strode over to the three girls.
"What do you mean by keeping me waiting, Miss Penny?" he demanded in a
tone that made Bess shrink away and tremble. "Your scene has been set an
hour. I want--Humph! what do _these_ girls want? Did you bring them in?"
Miss Penny poked Nan sharply in the ribs with her elbow. "Show him the
letter," she whispered. Adding aloud: "Oh, I brought them in, Mr. Gray.
That's what delayed me. When I saw they had a letter for you--"
"For me?" snorted the director, and took doubtfully enough the epistle
Nan held out to him. But when he sighted the superscription he tore it
open with an exclamation of impatient surprise.
"_Now_, what does Madam want?" he muttered, and those few words revealed
to Nan Sherwood what she had suspected to be the fact about the
director--that she was a very exacting task-mistress.
Miss Penny, nodding slily to Nan and Bess, slipped away to the stage on
which the Gypsy camp was set, and around which several men in brigandish
looking costumes were lounging.
"What's this you young ladies want of me?" asked the director, rather
puzzled, it seemed, after reading the note. "All she writes is to
recommend Miss Sherwood to my attention and then includes a lot of
instructions for to-morrow's work." He smiled sourly. "She is not
explicit. Do you want work?"
"Oh, mercy me! no!" cried Nan.
"I should say not!" murmured Bess.
The director's worried, querulous face showed relief. He listened
attentively while Nan explained about the runaways. She likewise repeated
the actress' version of the discharging of the girls whom she had
afterward identified as the two for whom Nan and Bess were in search.
"Yes, yes! I remember. And Madam was quite right in that instance,"
grudgingly admitted the director. He drew a notebook from his pocket and
fluttered the leaves. "Yes. Here are their names crossed off my list.
'Lola Montague' and 'Marie Fortesque.' I fancy," said Mr. Gray,
chuckling, "they expected to see those names on the bills."
"But, oh, Mr. Gray!" cried Nan Sherwood, feeling in no mood for laughing
at silly Sallie Morton and Celia Snubbins. "Don't you know where they
live--those two poor girls?"
"Why--no. They were extras and we get plenty of such people," said the
director, carelessly. "Now, the girl who sent them is as daring a girl as
I ever saw. I'm sorry she's hurt, or sick, or something, for although
Jenny Albert has little 'film charm,' as we call it, she is useful--
"There!" suddenly broke off Mr. Gray. "You might try Jenny's address. She
sent those girls here. She probably knows where they live."
He hastily wrote down the street and number on a card and handed it to
Nan. "Sorry. That's the best I can do for you, Miss Sherwood."
He turned away, taking up his own particular worries again.
"And, goodness me, Nan!" sighed Bess, as they went out of the cluttered
studio, back through the passage, and so into the courtyard and the
street again. "Goodness me! I think _we_ have the greatest lot of other
people's worries on our shoulders that I ever heard of. We seem to
collect other folk's troubles. How do we manage it?"