Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures by Alice Emerson

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Ruth thought that she was scarcely a child. But she only said: "I am glad
you like the part. I meant it for you."

"I know. Mr. Hammond told me that you insisted on my playing the part of
Eve Adair. And, oh! what about that nice boy, Thomas Cameron? Are he and
his sister well? I received a lovely box of sweets from Thomas after I
went back to the city that time."

"He is well, I believe," said Ruth, gravely. "He is not far from here, you
know; he attends the Seven Oaks Military Academy."

"Oh! so he does. Maybe we shall go that way," said Hazel Gray, carelessly.
"It would be lots of fun to see him again. Give my love to his sister."

"Yes, Miss Gray," Ruth returned seriously. "I will tell Helen."

She really liked Hazel Gray, and wished to see her get ahead. And it was
through her acquaintanceship with Hazel that Ruth had made a friend of
Mr. Hammond. But it annoyed Ruth that the actress should continue to be so
friendly with Tom Cameron.

She thought no good could come of it Tom Cameron had always seemed such a
seriously inclined boy, in spite of his ready fun and cheerfulness. To
have him show such partiality for a girl so much older than himself,
really a grown woman, as Hazel Gray was, disturbed Ruth.

She said nothing to her chum about it. If Helen was not worried about her
twin's predilection for the moving picture actress, it did not become Ruth
to worry.

Ruth went back to Briarwood, encouraged to go on with the writing of the
drama. From Mr. Hammond's fertile mind had come several helpful
suggestions. The plot of the play was very intimately connected with the
history of Briarwood. There was included in its scenes a "Masque of the
Marble Harp," in which the whole school was to be grouped about the
fountain in the sunken garden.

The marble figure of Harmony, or Poesy, or whatever it was supposed to
represent, was to come to life in the picture and strum the strings of the
lyre which it held. This was a trick picture and Mr. Hammond had explained
to Ruth just how it was to be made.

The legend of the marble harp, which had been kept alive by succeeding
classes of Briarwood girls for the purpose of hazing "infants," came in
very nicely now in Ruth's story. And the arrangement of this trick picture
suggested another thing to Ruth Fielding, something which she had been
racking her brains about for some time.

This idea had nothing to do with the present play; it had to do, instead,
with Mercy Curtis and the graduation exercises. One idea bred another in
Ruth Fielding's teeming brain. Her dramatic faculties, were being
sharpened.

With all their regular studies and recitations, the seniors had to take
their usual turns as monitors, and Ruth could not escape this duty.
Besides, it was an honor not to be scorned, to be chosen to preside over
the "primes," or to take the head of a table at dinner.

A teacher was ill on one day and Miss Brokaw asked Ruth to take certain
classes of the primary grade. The recitations were on subjects quite
familiar to Ruth and she felt no hesitancy in accepting the
responsibility; but there was more ahead of her than she supposed when she
entered on the task.

As it chanced, the flaxen-haired Amy Gregg was in the class of which Ruth
was sent to take charge. Amy scowled at the senior when the latter took
the desk; but most of the other girls were glad to see Ruth Fielding.

A little wrangle seemed to have begun before Ruth arrived, and the senior
thought to settle the difficulty and start the day with "clear decks," by
getting at the seat of the trouble.

"What is the matter, Mary Pease?" she asked a flushed and indignant girl
who was angrily glaring at another. "Calm down, honey. Don't let your
anger rise."

"If Amy Gregg says again that I took her gold pen, I'll tell something
about _her_ she won't like, now I warn her!" threatened Mary.

"Well, it's gone!" stormed Amy, "and you're the nearest. I'd like to know
who took it if you didn't?"

"Well! of all the nerve! I want you to understand that I don't have to
steal pens."

"Hold on, girls," put in Ruth. "This must not go on. You know, I shall be
obliged to report you both."

"Of course!" snarled Amy. "You big girls are always telling on us."

"Oh!" and "Shame!" was the general murmur about the classroom; for most of
the girls loved Ruth.

"Why, you nasty thing!" cried Mary Pease, glaring at Amy. "You ought to be
ashamed. I'll tell what I know about _you_!"

"Mary!" exclaimed Ruth, with sudden fright. "Be still."

"I guess you don't know what I know about Gregg, Ruth Fielding," cried the
excited Mary.

"We do not want to know," Ruth said hastily. "Let us stop this wrangling
and turn to our work. Suppose Miss Brokaw should come in?"

"And I guess Miss Brokaw or anybody would want to know what I saw that
night of the fire," declared Mary Pease, wildly. "_I_ know whose room the
fire started in, and _how_ it started."

"Mary!" cried Ruth, rising from her seat, while the girls of the class
uttered wondering exclamations.

But Mary was hysterical now.

"I saw a light in _her_ room!" she cried, pointing an accusing finger at
the white-faced and shaking Amy. "I peeped through the keyhole, and it was
a candle burning on her table. She said she didn't have a candle. Bah!"

"Be still, Mary!" commanded Ruth again.

Amy Gregg was terror-stricken and shrank away from her accuser; but the
latter was too excited to heed Ruth.

"I know all about it. So does Miss Scrimp. I told her. That Amy Gregg left
the candle burning when she went to supper and it fell off her table into
the waste basket.

"And that," concluded Mary Pease, "was how the fire started that burned
down the West Dormitory, and I don't care who knows it, so there!"

CHAPTER XVII

ANOTHER OF CURLY'S TRICKS

Miss Scrimp, the matron of the old West Dormitory, had bound Mary Pease to
secrecy. But, as Jennie put it, "the binding did not hold and _Pease_
spilled the _beans_."

The story flew over the school like wildfire. Miss Scrimp, actually in
tears, was inclined to blame Ruth Fielding for the outbreak of the story.

"You ought to have taken Mary Pease and run her right into a closet!"
declared the matron. "Such behavior!"

Ruth was a good deal chagrined that the story should have come out while
she was monitor; but she really did not see how she could have helped it.
The quarrel between Amy Gregg and Mary Pease had commenced before Ruth had
gone into the classroom.

"And how could you help it?" cried the faithful Jennie. "I expect little
Pease has been aching to tell all these weeks. She should have been
quarantined, in the first place."

But there was nothing to do about it now, save "to pick up the pieces."
And that was no light task. Feeling ran high in Briarwood Hall against Amy
Gregg.

Some of the girls of her own age would not speak to her. Many of the older
girls made her feel by every glance and word they gave her that she was
taboo. And it was whispered on the campus that Amy would be sent home by
Mrs. Tellingham, if she could not be made to pay, or her folks be made to
pay, something toward the damage her carelessness had brought about.

Ruth sheltered the unfortunate Amy all she could. She even influenced her
closest friends to be kind to the child. At Mrs. Sadoc Smith's Helen and
Ann did not speak of the discovery of the origin of the fire, and, of
course, good-natured Jennie Stone did just as Ruth asked, while even Mercy
Curtis kept her lips closed.

Amy, however, not being an utterly callous girl, felt the condemnation of
the whole school. There was no escaping that.

Amy had denied having a candle on the night of the fire, and it shocked
and grieved Mrs. Tellingham very much to learn that one of her girls was
not to be trusted to speak the truth at all times.

Not because of the fire did the preceptress consider sending Amy Gregg
home, for the origin of the fire was plainly an accident, though bred in
carelessness. For prevarication, however, Mrs. Tellingham was tempted to
expel Amy Gregg.

The girl had denied the fact that she had left a candle burning in her
room when she went to supper. Mary Pease had seen it, and both Miss Scrimp
and Ruth Fielding knew that the fire started in that particular room.

Why the girl had left the candle burning was another mystery. Recklessly
denying the main fact, of course Amy would not explain the secondary
mystery. Nagged and heckled by some of the sophomores and juniors, Amy
declared she wished the whole school had burned down and then she would
not have had to stay at Briarwood another day!

Ruth and Helen one day rescued the girl from the midst of a mob of larger
girls who were driving Amy Gregg almost mad by taunting her with being a
"fire bug."

"What are you wild animals doing?" demanded Helen, who was much sharper
with the evil doers among the under classes than was Ruth. "So she's a
'fire-bug?' Oh, girls! what better are you than poor little Gregg, I'd
like to know? Every soul of you has done worse things than she has
done--only your acts did not have such appalling results. Behave
yourselves!"

Ruth could not have talked that way to the girls; but many of them slunk
away under Helen's reprimand. Ruth took the crying Amy away--but neither
she nor Helen was thanked.

"I wish you girls would mind your own business and let me alone," sobbed
the foolish child, hysterically. "I can fight my own battles, I'll tear
their hair out! I'll scratch their faces for them!"

"Oh, dear me, Amy!" sighed Ruth. "Do you think that would be any real
satisfaction to you? Would it change things for the better, or in the
least?"

What made the girls so unfeeling toward Amy was the fact that from the
beginning she had expressed no sorrow over the destruction of the
dormitory, and that she had refused to write home to ask for a
contribution to the fund being raised for the new building.

When every other girl at Briarwood Hall was doing her best to get money to
help Mrs. Tellingham, Amy Gregg's callousness regarding the fire and its
results showed up, said Jennie, "just like a stubbed toe on a bare-footed
boy!"

Really, Ruth began to think she would have to act as guard for Amy Gregg
to and from the school. The girl was not allowed to play with the other
girls of her age. Wherever she went a small riot started.

It had become general knowledge that Amy Gregg's father was a wealthy man,
and that the family lived very sumptuously. Amy had a stepmother and
several half brothers and sisters; but she did not get along well with
them and, therefore, her father had sent her to Briarwood Hall.

"I guess she was too mean at home for them to stand her," said Mary Pease,
who was the most vindictive of Amy's class, "and they sent her here to
trouble _us_. And see what she's done!"

There was no stopping the younger girls from nagging. The fact that so
much was being done by others to help the dormitory fund kept the feud
against Amy Gregg alive. Her one partisan at this time (for Ruth could not
be called that, no matter how sorry she was for her) was Curly Smith.

Once or twice Amy slipped away before Ruth was ready to go back to Mrs.
Smith's house for the evening, and started alone for the lodgings. The
Cedar Walk was the nearest way, and there were many hiding places along
the Cedar Walk.

Mary Pease and her chums lay in wait for the unfortunate Amy on two
occasions, and chased her all the way to Mrs. Sadoc Smith's. What they
intended doing to the much disliked girl if they had caught her, nobody
seemed to know. They just seemed determined to plague her.

Ruth did not want to report the culprits; but warning them did not seem to
do any good. On a third occasion Amy started home ahead, and Ruth and
Helen hurried after her to make sure that none of the other girls
troubled the victim. Half way down the walk, Helen exclaimed:

"See there, Ruth! Amy isn't alone, after all."

"Who's with her?" asked Ruth. "I can't see--Why! it can't be Ann?"

"No. But she's tall like Ann."

"And that girl walks queerly. Did you ever see the like? Strides along
just like a boy--Oh!"

Out of a cedar clump appeared a crowd of shrieking girls, who began to
dance around Amy and her companion, shouting scornful phrases which were
bound to make Amy Gregg angry. But Mary and her friends this time received
a surprise. Amy ran. Not so the "girl" with her.

This strange individual ran among Amy's tormentors, tripped two or three
of them up, tore down the hair of several, taking the ribbons as trophies,
and sent the whole crowd shrieking away, much alarmed and not a little
punished.

"It isn't a girl!" gasped Helen. "It's Curly Smith. And as sure as you
live he's got on some of Ann's clothes. _Won't_ our Western friend be
furious at that?"

But Ann Hicks was not troubled at all. She had lent Curly the frock and
hat, and when he behaved himself and walked properly he certainly made a
very pretty girl.

He gave Amy's enemies a good fright, and they let her alone after that.

"But, goodness me! what is Briarwood Hall coming to?" demanded Ruth, in
discussing this incident with her room-mates. "We are leaving a tribe of
young Indians here for Mrs. Tellingham to control. Helen! you know we
never acted this way when we were in the lower grades."

"Well, we were pretty bad sometimes," Helen said slowly. "We did not
engage in free fights, however."

"They all ought to have a good spanking," declared Ann, with conviction.

"And I suppose you seniors ought to do it?" sneered Amy, who could not be
gentle even with her own friends.

"I'm not convinced that I sha'n't begin with you, my lady," said the
Western girl, sharply. "I lent those old duds of mine to Curly to help you
out, and you are about as grateful as a poison snake! I never saw such a
girl in my life before."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FIVE-REEL DRAMA

There was a spark of romance in old Mrs. Sadoc Smith, after all. Ruth read
to her the first part of "The Heart of a Schoolgirl" and to further the
continuation and ultimate successful completion of that scenario, the old
lady would have done much.

Curly looked upon Ruth with awe. He was a devotee of the moving pictures,
and every nickel he could spare went into the coffers of one or the other
of the "picture palaces" in Lumberton. Lumberton was a thriving city, with
both water-freight and railroad facilities besides its mills and lumber
interests; so it could well support several of the modern houses of
entertainment that have sprung up in such mushroom growth all over the
land.

Mr. Hammond's films taken at Lumberton were of an educational nature and
the Board of Trade of the city expected much advertising of the industries
of the place when the films were released.

However, to get back to Mrs. Sadoc Smith--Her instructions from Mrs.
Tellingham included the putting out of the lamp in the big room the four
Briarwood girls occupied by ten o'clock every night; but Mrs. Smith
allowed Ruth to come downstairs after the other girls were in bed and
write under the radiance of the reading lamp on her sitting-room table. It
was quiet there, for Mrs. Sadoc Smith either sent Curly to bed, or made
him keep as still as a mouse. And there was nobody else to disturb the
young author as she wrote, save the cat that delighted to jump up into her
lap and lie there purring, while the scenario was being written.

Ruth did not avail herself of this privilege often; but she was desirous
for the scenario to be finished and in Mr. Hammond's hands. So sure had
that gentleman been of her success, and so pleased was he with the plan of
the entire play, that he had taken a copy of the first part with him when
he left Lumberton and now wrote that Mr. Grimes was already making a few
of the studio scenes.

The young author rather shrank from letting the pugnacious Mr. Grimes have
anything to do with her story; but she knew that both Mr. Hammond and
Hazel Gray thought highly of the man's ability. Nor was she in a position
to insist upon any other director. She was working for Briarwood, not for
her own advantage.

"If Grimes takes hold of it with his usual vigor, it will be a success,"
Mr. Hammond assured Ruth in his letter. "Hurry along the rest of the play.
Spring is upon us, and we shall have some good open weather soon in which
to take the pictures at Briarwood Hall."

Ruth hurried. Indeed, the story was finished so rapidly that the girl
scarcely realized what she had done. There was no time for her to go over
the scenario carefully for revision and polishing. The last scenes she
read to nobody; she scarcely knew herself how they sounded.

Ruth Fielding had written an ingenious and very original scenario. Its
crudities were many and manifest; nevertheless, the true gold was there.
Mr. Hammond had recognized the originality of the girl's ideas in the
first part of the play. He was not going into the scheme, and risking his
money and reputation as a film producer, from any feeling of sentiment. It
was a business proposition, pure and simple, with him.

In the first place, nobody had ever thought of just this kind of moving
picture. The producer would be in the field with a new idea. In addition,
the drama would be looked for all over the country by the friends of the
pupils, past and present, of Briarwood Hall. The girls themselves
appearing in some of the scenes would add to the interest their parents,
friends, and the graduates of the Hall, were bound to take in the
production.

To Ruth, nervous and overworked after the finishing of the scenario, the
days of waiting until Mr. Hammond read and pronounced judgment on the
play, were hard indeed to endure. No matter how much confidence her
friends--even Mrs. Tellingham--had in her ability to succeed, Ruth was not
at all sure she had written up to the mark.

Try as she might she began to fall behind in her recitation marks during
these days of waiting. Her nervousness was enhanced by the doubts she felt
regarding her general standing in her classes.

Mrs. Tellingham talked cheerfully in chapel about "our graduating class;"
but some of the girls who were working with a view to receiving their
diplomas in June would never be able to reach the high mark necessary for
Mrs. Tellingham to allow them those certificates.

There would be a fringe of girls standing at the back of the class who,
although never appearing at Briarwood Hall another term, could not win the
roll of parchment which would enter them in good standing in any of the
women's colleges. Ruth did not want to be among those who failed.

She worried about this a good deal; she could not sleep at night; and her
cheeks grew pale. She worked hard, and yet sometimes when she reached the
classroom she felt as though her head were a hollow drum in which the
thoughts beat to and fro without either rhyme or reason.

Ruth Fielding was a perfectly healthy girl, as well as an athletic one.
But in a time of stress like this the very healthiest person can easily
and quickly break down. "I feel as though I should fly!" is an expression
often heard from nervous and overwrought schoolgirls. Ruth wished that she
might fly--away from school and study and scenarios and sullen girls like
Amy Gregg.

One evening when she came back to Mrs. Sadoc Smith's with a strapful of
books to study before bedtime, Ruth saw Curly Smith by the shed door busy
with some fishing tackle. Ruth's pulses leaped. Fishing! She had not
thrown a hook into the water for months and months!

"Going fishing, Curly?" she said wistfully.

"Yep."

"Where are they biting now?"

"There's carp and bream under the old mill-dam up in Norman's Woods. I saw
'em jumping there to-day."

"Oh! when are you going?" gasped the girl, hungry for outdoor sport and
adventure.

"In the morning--before _you're_ up," said the boy, rather sullenly.

"I wager I'll be awake," said Ruth, sitting down beside him. "I wake
up--oh, just awfully early! and lie and think."

Curly looked at her. "That don't get you nothin'," he said.

"But I can't help it."

"Gran says you're overworked," Curly said. "Why don't you run away from
school if they make you work so hard? _I_ would. Our teacher's sick so
there isn't any session at the district school to-morrow."

"Oh, Curly! Play hooky?" gasped Ruth, clasping her hands.

"Yep. Only you girls haven't any pluck."

"If I played hooky would you let me go fishing with you to-morrow?" asked
Ruth, her eyes dancing.

"You haven't the sand," scoffed Curly.

"But can I go if I _dare_ run away?" urged Ruth.

"Yep," said the boy, but with rather a sour grin.

"What time are you going to start?"

"Four."

"If I'm not down in the kitchen by that time, throw some gravel up to the
window," commanded Ruth. "But don't break the window."

"Oh, shucks! you won't go when you see how dark and damp it is," declared
Curly.

When, just after four o'clock in the morning, Curly crept downstairs from
his shed chamber, knuckling his eyes to get the sleep out, there was a
light in the kitchen and Ruth was just pouring out two fragrant cups of
coffee which flanked a heaping plate of doughnuts.

"Old Scratch!" gasped Curly. "Gran will have our hides and hair! You're
not _going_, Ruth Fielding?"

"If you will let me," said Ruth, meekly.

"Well--if you want. But you'll get wet and dirty and mussy----"

Then he stopped. He saw that Ruth had on an old gymnasium suit, her rubber
boots lay on the chair, and a warm polo coat was at hand. She already wore
her tam-o-shanter.

"Huh! I see you're ready," Curly said. "You might as well go. But
remember, if you want to come home before afternoon, you'll have to find
your way back alone. I'm not going to be bothered by a girl's fantods."

"All right, Curly," said Ruth, cheerfully.

Curly put his face under the spigot, brushed his hair before the little
mirror in the corner, and was ready to sample Ruth's coffee.

"We want to hurry," he said, filling his pockets with the doughnuts,
"it'll be broad daylight before we know it, and then everybody we see will
want to come along. The other fellows aren't on to the old dam yet this
season. The fish are running early."

He brought forth a basket with tackle and bait, dug over night. Ruth
burdened herself with a big, square box, neatly wrapped and tied. Curly
eyed this askance.

"I s'pose you expect to tear your clo'es and want something to wear back
to town that's decent," he growled.

"Well, I want to look half way respectable," laughed Ruth, as they set
forth.

The damp smell of thawing earth greeted their nostrils as they left the
house. No plowing had been done, save in very warm corners; but the lush
buds on the trees and bushes, and the crocuses by the corner of the old
house, promised spring.

A clape called at them raucously as he rapped out his warning on a dead
limb beside the road. A rabbit rose from its form and shot away into the
dripping woods. The sun poked a jolly red face above the wooded ridge
before the two runaways left the beaten track and took a narrow woodpath
that would cut off about a mile of their walk.

It was a rough way and the pace Curly set was made to force Ruth to beg
for time. But the girl gritted her teeth, minded not the pain in her side,
and sturdily followed him. By and by the pain stopped, she got her second
wind, and then she began to tread close on Curly's heels.

"Huh!" he grunted at last, "you needn't be in such a hurry. The dam will
stay there--and so will the fish."

"All right," responded Ruth, still meekly, but with dancing eyes.

The fishing place was reached and while yet the early rays of the sun
fell aslant the dimpling pools under the dam, the two threw in their
baited hooks. Curly evidently expected to see the girl balk at the bait,
but Ruth seized firmly the fat, squirmy worm and impaled it scientifically
upon her hook.

She caught the first fish, too! In fact, as the morning drew leisurely
along, Ruth's string splashing in the cool water grew much faster than
Curly's.

"I never saw the beat of your luck!" declared the boy. "You must have been
fishing before, Ruth Fielding."

"Lots of times."

"Where?"

Ruth told him of the Red Mill on the bank of the Lumano, of her fishing
trips with Tom Cameron, and of all the fun that they had about Cheslow,
and up the river above the mill.

Mid-forenoon came and Curly produced some crackers and a piece of bologna.
The doughnuts he had pocketed were gone long ago.

"Have a bite, Ruth?" he said generously. "I wish it was better, but I
didn't have much money, and Gran won't ever let me carry any lunch. She
says the proper place for a boy to eat is at his own table. It's there for
me, and if I don't get home to get it, then I can do without."

Ruth accepted a piece of the bologna and the crackers gravely. She baited
her hook with a piece of the bologna and caught a big, struggling carp.

"What do you know about that?" cried Curly, in disgust. "You could bait
your hook with a marble and catch a whopper, I believe!"

Meanwhile, Ruth was having a most delightful time. The roses had come back
into her cheeks at the first. Her eyes sparkled, and she "wriggled all
over," as she expressed it, "with just the _feel_ of spring."

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