The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm | Page 2

just fine to have fresh eggs?" demanded
the one addressed as Ruth. "If Alice thinks it's easy to get them in the
city----"
"Now Ruth DeVere, you know I was only chaffing!" exclaimed Alice.
"But I don't believe you'll get much chance to gather eggs, Ruth."

"Why not?"
"Those two youngsters will claim that as one of their daily--chores--I
believe they're called on a farm," and with laughing brown eyes she
motioned to the boy and girl who, at that moment, were playing tag
around the motherly-looking woman.
"Oh, yes, I suppose Tommy and Nellie will be after them," agreed Ruth.
"But I can go with them."
"And jump off the beam in the barn down into the hay! Won't that be
fun!" cried Alice. "I haven't done that--not in years, when we went once
to grandfather's farm. Oh, for a good jump into the fragrant hay!"
"Why, Alice, you wouldn't do that; would you?" asked Ruth, as she
straightened her sailor.
"She may--and you may all have to!" spoke the man who seemed in
charge of this odd theatrical company.
"How is that, Mr. Pertell?" asked Ruth.
"Well, you know we're going to make moving pictures of all sorts of
rural scenes that will fit in the plays, and jumping into a haymow may
be one of them," he laughed.
"I refuse to do any such foolishness as that!" broke in the tragic actor.
"I have demeaned myself enough already in this farce and travesty of
acting, and to jump into a haymow--ye gods! Never!" and he seemed to
shudder.
"Oh, I guess you'll do it, Mr. Bunn, or give up your place to someone
who will," said Mr. Frank Pertell, the manager, calmly.
The tragic actor sighed, and said nothing.
"Huh! Yes! Jumping around in barns! Some of us will break our arms
or legs, that's certain!" exclaimed the man who looked as though all the
world were sad. "I know some accident will happen to us yet."

"Oh, cheer up, Mr. Sneed. The worst is yet to come, Sir Knight of the
Doleful Countenance!" exclaimed a fresh-faced young man who carried
under his arm a small box, from which projected a handle and a small
tube. The initiated would have known it at once as a camera for taking
moving pictures. "It will be jolly out there at Oak Farm, I'm sure."
"That's right, Russ! Don't let Mr. Sneed get gloomy on such a fine
day!" whispered Alice DeVere. "But when is our train coming?"
"It will be made up soon," Russ Dalwood answered. "Perhaps it is
ready now. I'll go and inquire."
The two girls, before spoken of as being too well aware of their own
good looks, were talking together at one side of the big concrete
platform beneath the train shed. As they strolled about and talked, one
of them, from time to time, applied a chamois to her already
well-powdered nose, and took occasional glimpses of herself in the tiny
mirror imbedded in the top of the box that contained her "beautifier."
Occasionally the two would glance at Alice and Ruth, and make
remarks.
"Train will soon be ready for us," announced Russ Dalwood, coming
back to join the rest of the theatrical troupe which, instead of presenting
plays in a theater, posed for them before the clicking eye of the camera,
the films later to be shown to thousands in the chain of moving picture
playhouses which took the Comet Company's service. "We can go
aboard in five minutes!" Russ added.
"That's good," sighed Ruth. "There's is nothing so tiresome as waiting.
Which track will it be on, Russ?"
"Number thirteen!"
"What! Great Scott! Track thirteen! I'm not going!" cried Pepper Sneed,
who had come to be known as the "grouch" of the company.
"Not going! Why not, I'd like to know?" demanded Mr. Pertell.

"Why--track thirteen--that's unlucky, you know. Something is sure to
happen!"
"Well, as we have to get to Beatonville, where Oak Farm is located,
and as this is the only road that goes there, I'm afraid we'll have to take
that train, whether it's on track thirteen or not," declared Mr. Pertell.
"Unless," he added with gentle sarcasm, "you can get the company to
switch it to another track."
Mr. Sneed did not answer, but later Paul Ardite, who was one of the
younger members of the company, saw the actor tieing a knot in his
watch chain, and tossing a penny into a rubbish heap.
"What in the world are you doing that for?" demanded Paul.
"Trying to break the hoodoo!" exclaimed Mr. Sneed. "To start out to do
new film work on track thirteen! Whew! That's terrible!"
But Paul only laughed.
"Now, is everyone here?" asked Mr. Pertell a little later, when a
railroad man, through a megaphone, announced