The Moving Picture Girls | Page 2

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