"Perhaps you can pay me more easily than you think," said Ruth, bashfully, but with dancing eyes.
"How? Tell me at once," said Miss Gray.
"I"m just _mad_ to try writing a scenario for a moving picture," confessed Ruth. "But I don"t know how to go about getting it read."
Miss Gray smiled, but made no comment upon Ruth"s desire. She merely said, pleasantly:
"If you write your scenario, my dear, I will get our manager to read it."
"That awful Mr. Grimes?" cried Ruth. "Oh! I shouldn"t want _him_ to read it."
Hazel Gray laughed heartily at that. "Don"t judge, the taste of a baked porcupine by his quills," she said. "Grimes is a very rough and unpleasant man; but he gets there. He is one of the most successful directors Mr.
Hammond has working for him."
"You have mentioned Mr. Hammond before?" said Ruth, questioningly.
"He is the man I will show your scenario to." Then she added: "If I am still working for him. Mr. Hammond is a very nice man; but Grimes does not like me," and again the girl sighed, and a cloud came over her pretty face.
"I would not work under such a mean man as that Grimes!" declared Ruth.
"You might have been drowned because of his carelessness."
"It is my misfortune--being an actress--often to work under unpleasant conditions. I want to get ahead, and I would like to please Grimes; he puts over his pictures, and he has made several film actresses quite famous. Of course, although my first consideration must necessarily be my bread and b.u.t.ter, I hope for a little fame on the side, too."
"Oh! you have achieved that, have you not?" said Ruth, timidly. "I thought you had already made a name for yourself."
"Not as great a name as I hope to gain some day," declared Hazel Gray.
"But thank you for the compliment. I was carried on to the stage when I was a baby in arms by my dear mother, who was an actress of some ability.
My father was an actor. He died of a fever in the South before I can remember, and when I was seven my mother died.
"Kind people trained me for the stage; they were kind enough to say I had talent. And now I have tried to do my best in the movies. Mr. Hammond thinks I am a good pantomimist; but Grimes declares I have no "film charm,"" and Miss Gray sighed again. "He has another girl he wants to push forward, and is angry that Mr. Hammond did not send her to head this company."
"Then this Mr. Hammond is quite an important man?" asked Ruth.
"Head of the Alectrion Film Corporation. He is immensely wealthy and a really _good_ man. Of course," went on Miss Gray, "he is in the business of making films for money; just the same, he makes a great many pictures purely for art"s sake, or for educational reasons. You would like Mr.
Hammond, I am sure," and the girl in bed sighed again.
Ruth saw that talking troubled Miss Gray and kept her mind upon her quarrel with the moving picture director; so it did not need Aunt Alvirah"s warning to make the girl of the Red Mill steal away and leave the patient to such repose as she might get.
CHAPTER IV
A TIME OF CHANGE
Tom Cameron looked funny enough in some of the miller"s garments; but he was none the worse for his bath in the river. He, too, had been dosed with hot tea by Aunt Alvirah, though he made a wry face over it.
"Never you mind, boy," Ruth told him, laughing. "It is better to have a bad taste in your mouth for a little while than a sore throat for a week."
"Hear! hear the philosopher!" cried Tom. "You"d think I was a tender little blossom."
"You know, you _might_ have the croup," suggested Ruth, wickedly.
"Croup! What am I--a kid?" demanded Tom, half angry at this suggestion. He had begun to notice that his sister and Ruth were inclined to set him down as a "small boy" nowadays.
"How is it," Tom asked his father one day, "that Helen is all grown up of a sudden? _I"m_ not! Everybody treats me just as they always have; but even Colonel Post takes off his hat to our Helen on the street with overpowering politeness, and the other men speak to her as though she were as old as Mrs. Murchiston. It gets _me_!"
Mr. Cameron laughed; but he sighed thereafter, too. "Our little Helen _is_ growing up, I expect. She"s taken a long stride ahead of you, Tommy, while you"ve been asleep."
"Huh! I"m just as old as she is," growled Tom. "But _I_ don"t feel grown up."
And here was Ruth Fielding holding the same att.i.tude toward him that his twin did! Tom did not like it a bit. He was a manly fellow and had always observed a protective air with Ruth and his sister. And, all of a sudden, they had become young ladies while he was still a boy.
"I wish Nell would come back with my duds," he grumbled. "I have a good mind to walk home in these things of the miller"s."
"And be taken for an animated scarecrow on the way?" laughed Ruth. "Better "bide a wee," Tommy. Sister will get here with your rompers pretty soon.
Have patience."
"Now you talk just like Bobbins" sister. Behave, will you?" complained Tom.
Ruth tripped out of the room to peep at the guest, and Aunt Alvirah hobbled in and, letting herself down into her low chair, with a groan of "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!" smiled indulgently at Tom"s gloomy face.
"What is the matter, Mister Tom?" she asked. "Truly, you look as colicky as Amos Dodge--an" they do say he lived on sour apples!"
Tom had to laugh at this; but it was rather a rueful laugh. "I don"t know what is coming over these girls--Ruth and my sister," he said, "They"re beginning to put on airs like grown ladies. Cracky! they used to be some fun."
"Growin" up, Mister Tom--growin" up. So"s my pretty. I hate to see it, but ye can"t fool Natur"--no, sir! Natur" says to these young things: "Advance!" an" they"ve jest got to march, I reckon," and Aunt Alvirah sighed, too. Then her little, bird-like eyes twinkled suddenly and she chuckled. "Jest the same," she added, in a whisper, "Ruth got out all her doll-babies the other day and played with "em jest like she was ten years old."
"Ho, ho!" cried Tom, his face clearing up. "I guess she"s only making believe to be grown up, after all!"
Helen came finally and they left Tom alone in the kitchen to change his clothes. Then the Camerons hurried away, for it was close to supper time.
Both Helen and Tom were greatly interested in the moving picture actress; but she had fallen into a doze and they could not bid her good-bye.
"But I"m going to run down in the morning to see how she is," Tom announced. "I"ll see her before she goes away. She"s a plucky one, all right!"
"Humph!" thought Ruth, when the automobile had gone, "Tom seems to have been wonderfully taken with that Miss Gray"s appearance."
When Jabez Potter came in from the mill and found the strange girl in the best bed he was inclined to criticize. He was a tall, dusty, old man, for whom it seemed a hard task ever to speak pleasantly. Aunt Alvirah, when she was much put out with him, said he "croaked like a raven!"
"Gals, gals, gals!" he grumbled. "This house seems to be nigh full of "em when you air to home, Niece Ruth."
"And empty enough of young life, for a fac", when my pretty is away," put in Aunt Alvirah.
Ruth, not minding her Uncle Jabez"s strictures, went about setting the supper table with puckered lips, whistling softly. This last was an accomplishment she had picked up from Tom long ago.
"And whistling gals is the wust of all!" snarled Jabez Potter, from the sink, where he had just taken his face out of the soapsuds bath he always gave it before sitting down to table. "I reckon ye ain"t forgot what I told ye:
""Whistlin" gals an" crowin" hens Always come to some bad ends!""