Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures by Alice Emerson

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"Bigger," announced Curly. "Old Scratch! I'd like to shoot him and have
him stuffed."

"I'd rather have some of the turkey stuffing," chuckled Ann Hicks. "Owl
would be rather tough, I reckon."

"Oh, not to eat!" scoffed Curly. "I'd put him in Gran's parlor. And that
reminds me of an owl story----"

"Don't tell us any old stories; tell us new ones, if you must tell any,"
Ann interrupted.

"How do you know whether this is old or young till I've told it?" demanded
Curly, as they all three sat on the ruined doorstep of the mill to rest.

"Quite right, Curly," sighed Ruth. "Go ahead. Make us laugh. I feel like
crying."

"Then you can cry over it," retorted the boy. "There was a butcher who had
a stuffed owl in his shop and an old Irishman came in and asked him: 'How
mooch for the broad-faced bur-r-rd?'

"'It's an owl,' said the butcher.

"The old man repeated his question--'how mooch for the broad-faced
bur-r-rd?'

"'It's an owl, I tell you!' exclaimed the butcher.

"'I know it's _ould_,' says the Irishman. 'But what d'ye want for it?
It'll make soup for me boar-r-rders!'"

"That's a good story," admitted Ruth, "but try to think up some way of
finding poor little Amy, instead of telling funny tales."

"Oh, how can I help----"

Curly stopped. Ann, who was sitting in the middle, grabbed both him and
Ruth. "Listen to that!" she whispered. "_That_ isn't another owl, is it?"

"What is it?" gasped Ruth.

Somewhere in the ruin of the mill there was a noise. It might have been
the voice of an animal or of a bird, but it sounded near enough like a
human being to scare all three of the young people on the doorstep.

"Sa-ay," quavered Curly. "You don't suppose there are such things as
ghosts, do you, girls?"

"No, I don't!" snapped Ruth. "Don't try to scare us either, Curly."

"Honest, I'm not. I'm right here," cried the boy. "You know I never made
that noise----"

"There it is again!" exclaimed Ann.

The sound was like the cry of something in distress. Ruth got up suddenly
and tried to put on a brave front. "I can't sit here and listen to that,"
she said.

"Let's go," urged Ann. "I'm ready."

"Oh, say----" began Curly, when Ruth interrupted him by seizing the
lantern.

"Don't fret, Curly Smith," she said. "We're not going without finding out
what that sound means."

"Maybe it's young owls, and the old one will come back and pick our eyes
out," suggested Ann.

"Get a club, Curly," commanded Ruth. "We'll be ready, then, for man or
beast."

This order gave Curly confidence, and made him pluck up his own waning
courage. These girls depended upon him, and he was not the boy to back
down before even a ghostly Unknown.

He found a club and went side by side with Ruth into the mill. The sound
that had disturbed them was repeated. Ruth was sure, now, that it was
somebody sobbing.

"Amy! Amy Gregg!" she called again.

"Pshaw!" murmured Ann. "It isn't Amy. She'd have been out of here in a
hurry when we shouted for her before."

Ruth was not so sure of that. They came to a break in the flooring. Once
there had been steps here leading down into the cellar of the mill, but
the steps had rotted away.

"Amy!" called Ruth again. She knelt and held the lantern as far down the
well as she could reach. The sound of sobbing had ceased.

"Amy, _dear_!" cried Ruth. "It's Ruth and Ann, And Curly is with us. Do
answer if you hear me!"

There was a murmur from below. Ann cried out in alarm, but Curly
exclaimed: "I believe that's Amy, Ruth! She must be hurt--the silly thing.
She's tumbled down this old well."

"How will we get to her?" cried Ruth. "Amy! how did you get down there?
Are you hurt, Amy?"

"Go away!" said a faint voice from below.

"Old Scratch! Isn't that just like her?" groaned Curly. "She was hiding
from us."

"Here," said Ruth, drawing up the lantern and setting it on the floor. "It
can't be very deep. I'm going to drop down there, Curly, and then you pass
down the lantern to me."

"You'll break your neck, Ruth!" cried Ann.

"No. I'm not going to risk my neck at all," Ruth calmly affirmed.

She set the lantern on the broken floor and swung herself down into the
black hole. She hung by her hands and her feet did not touch the bottom.
Suddenly she felt a qualm of terror. Perhaps the cellar was a good deal
deeper than she had supposed!

She could not raise herself up again, and she almost feared to drop. "Let
down the light, Curly!" she whispered.

CHAPTER XXII

DISASTER THREATENS

Before Curly could comply with Ruth's whispered request, her fingers
slipped on the edge of the flooring. "Oh!" she cried out, and--dropped as
much as three inches!

"Goodness me, Ruth!" gasped Ann Hicks. "Are you killed?"

"No--o. But I might as well have been as to be scared to death," declared
the girl of the Red Mill. "I never thought the cellar was so shallow."

There was a rustling near by. Ruth thought of rats and almost screamed
aloud. "Give me the lantern--quick!" she called up to Curly Smith.

"Here you are," said that youth. "And if Amy is down there she ought to be
ashamed of herself--making us so much trouble."

Amy was there, as Ruth saw almost immediately when she could throw the
radiance of the lantern about her. But Ruth did not feel like scolding the
younger girl.

Amy had crept away into a corner. Her movements made the rustling Ruth
had heard. She hid her face against her arm and sobbed with abandonment.
Her dress was torn and muddy, her shoes showed that she had waded in mire.
She had lost her hat and her flaxen hair was a tangle of briers and green
burrs.

"My _dear_!" cried Ruth, kneeling down beside her. "What does it mean? Why
did you come here? Oh, you're sick!"

A single glance at the flushed face and neck of the smaller girl, and a
tentative touch upon her wrist, assured Ruth of that last fact. Amy seemed
burning up with fever. Ruth had never seen a case of scarlet fever, but
she feared that might be Amy's trouble.

"How long have you been here?" she asked Amy.

"Si--since--since it got dark," choked the girl.

"Is your throat sore?" asked Ruth, anxiously.

"Yes, it is; aw--awful sore."

"And you're feverish," said Ruth.

"I--I'm aw--all shivery, too," wept Amy Gregg, quite given up to misery
now.

Ruth was confident that the smaller girl had developed the fever that she
feared. Chill, fever, sore throat, and all, made the diagnosis seem quite
reasonable.

"How did you get into this cellar?" she asked Amy.

"There's a hole in the underpinning over yonder," said the culprit.

"Come on, then; we'll get out that way. Can you walk?"

"Oh--oh--yes," choked Amy.

She proved this by immediately starting out of the cellar. Ruth lit the
way with the lantern.

"Hi!" shouted Curly Smith, "where are you going with that light?"

"Come back to the door," commanded Ruth's muffled voice in the cellar.
"You can find your way all right."

"What do you know about that?" demanded Ann. "Leaves us in the lurch for
that miserable child, who ought to be walloped."

"Oh, Ann, don't say that!" cried Ruth, as she and the sick girl appeared
at the mill door. "No! don't come near us. I'll carry the lantern myself
and lead Amy. She's not feeling well, but she can walk. We must get her to
Mrs. Smith's just as soon as possible and call a doctor."

"What's the matter with her?" demanded Curly, curiously.

"She feels bad. That's enough," said Ruth, shortly. "Come on, Amy."

For once Amy Gregg was glad to accept Ruth Fielding's help. She had no
idea what Ruth thought was the matter with her, and she stumbled on beside
the older girl, sleepy and ill, given up to utter misery. Curly and Ann
began to be suspicious when Ruth forbade them to approach Amy and herself.

"Old Scratch!" whispered the boy to the Western girl. "I bet Amy's got
small-pox or something. Ruth Fielding will catch it, too."

"Hush!" exclaimed Ann, fiercely. "It's not as bad as that."

It was a long walk to Mrs. Sadoc Smith's. At the last, Ruth almost carried
Amy, who was not a particularly small girl. Curly grabbed the lantern and
insisted upon walking close to them.

"No matter if I _do_ catch the epizootic; guess I'll get over it," said
the boy.

They finally came to the Smith house. Helen and Mrs. Sadoc Smith came out
on the porch when the dog barked. Ruth made Ann and Curly go ahead and
held back with the sick girl.

"You go right upstairs with Helen, Ann," commanded Ruth. "I want to talk
to Mrs. Smith about Amy. She must be put in a warm room downstairs."

Mrs. Sadoc Smith agreed to this proposal the instant she saw Amy's flushed
face and heard her muttering.

"You telephone for Doctor Lambert, Henry," commanded Mrs. Smith. "We'll
have him give a look at her--though I could dose her myself, I reckon, and
bring her out all right."

Ruth feared the worst. She secretly stuck to her first diagnosis that Amy
had scarlet fever, but she did not say this to Mrs. Smith. They put Amy to
bed between blankets, and Mrs. Smith succeeded in getting the girl to
drink a dose of hot tea.

"That'll start her perspiring, which won't do a bit of harm," she said to
Ruth. "But I never saw anybody's face so red before--and her hands and
arms, too. She's breaking all out, I do declare."

Ruth was thinking: "If they have to quarantine Amy, I'll be quarantined
with her. I'll have to nurse her instead of going to school. Poor little
thing! she will require somebody's constant attention.

"But, oh dear!" added the girl of the Red Mill, "what will become of my
school work? I'll never be able to graduate in the world. Lucky those
moving pictures are taken--I won't be needed any more in those. Oh, dear!"

Ruth did not allow a murmur to escape her lips, however. She insisted on
remaining by the patient all night, too. Mrs. Smith was not able to quiet
the sick girl as well as Ruth did when the delirium Amy developed became
wilder.

It was almost daylight before Dr. Lambert came. He had been out of town on
a case, but came at once when he returned to Lumberton and found the call
from Mrs. Sadoc Smith's.

"What is it, Doctor?" asked the old lady. "She's as red as a lobster. Is
it anything catching? This girl ought not to be here, if it is."

"This girl had better remain here till we find out just what is the
matter," the doctor returned, scowling in a puzzled way at the patient. He
had seen at once that Ruth could control Amy.

"But what is it?"

"Fever. Delirium. You can see for yourself. What its name is, I'll tell
you when I come again. Keep on just as you are doing, and give her this
soothing medicine, and plenty of cracked ice--on her tongue, at least.
That is what is the matter; she is consumed with thirst. I'll have to see
that eruption again before I can say for sure what the matter is."

He went, and left the house in a turmoil of excitement. Helen and Ann did
not wish to go to Briarwood and leave Ruth; but Mrs. Tellingham commanded
them to. Much to his delight, Curly was kept out of his school to run
errands.

Ruth got a nap on the lounge in the sitting room, and felt better. The
doctor returned at nine o'clock in the forenoon and by that time the sick
girl's face was so swollen that she could scarcely see out of her eyes.
Her hands and wrists were puffed badly, too.

"Where has she been?" demanded Dr. Lambert.

Ruth told him what they supposed had happened to Amy the day before and
where she had been found late at night.

"Humph!" grunted the medical practitioner. "That's what I thought. Effect
of the _Rhus Toxicodendron_. Bad case."

This sounded very terrible to Ruth until she suddenly remembered something
she had read in her botany. A great feeling of relief came over her.

"Oh! poison-ash!" she cried.

"Good land! Nothin' but poison ivy?" demanded Mrs. Sadoc Smith.

"Poison oak, or poison sumac--whatever you have a mind to call it. But a
bad case of it, I assure you. I'll leave more of the cooling draught; and
I'll send up a salve to put on her face and hands. Don't let it get into
the poor child's eyes--and don't let her tear off the mask which she will
have to wear."

"Then there is no danger of scarlet fever," whispered Ruth, feeling
relieved.

CHAPTER XXIII

PUTTING ONE'S BEST FOOT FORWARD

Amy Gregg's escapade created a lot of excitement at Briarwood Hall.
Inasmuch as it affected Ruth, the whole school was in a flutter about it.

Helen and Ann had come to the Hall, late for breakfast, and spread the
news in the dining hall. They were both sure, by Ruth's actions and the
doctor's first noncommittal report, that Amy had some contagious disease.
Curly had made a deal of the sore throat Amy had confessed to.

"And if that's so," Helen said, almost in tears, "poor Ruth will be
quarantined for weeks."

"Why, Helen, how will she graduate?" gasped Lluella.

"She won't! She can't!" declared Ruth's chum. "It will be dreadful!"

"I say!" cried Jennie, thoroughly alarmed. "We musn't let her stay there
and nurse that young one. Why! what ever would we do if Ruthie Fielding
didn't graduate?"

"The class would be without a head," declared Mercy.

"It would be without a heart, at least--and a great, big one overflowing
with love and tenderness," cried Nettie Parsons, wiping her eyes.

"I don't want any more breakfast," said Jennie, pushing her plate away.
"Don't talk like that, Nettie. You'll get me to crying too. And that
always spoils my digestion."

"If Ruth isn't with us when we get our diplomas, I'm sure I don't want
any!" exclaimed Mary Cox. And she meant it, too. Mary Cox believed that
she owed her brother's life to Ruth Fielding, and although she was not
naturally a demonstrative girl, there was nobody at Briarwood Hall who
admired the girl of the Red Mill more than Mary.

In fact, the threat of disaster to Ruth's graduation plans cast a pall of
gloom over the school. The moving pictures were forgotten; Amy Gregg's
part in the destruction of the West Dormitory ceased to be a topic of
conversation. Was Ruth Fielding going to be held in quarantine? grew to be
a more momentous question than any other.

Ruth, however, was only absent from her accustomed haunts for two days.
The second day she remained to attend the patient because Amy begged so
hard to have her stay.

In her weakness and pain the sullen, secretive girl had turned
instinctively to the one person who had been uniformly gentle and kind to
her throughout all her trouble. Nothing that Amy had done or said, had
turned Ruth from her; and the barriers of girl's nature and of her evil
passions were broken down.

It was not, perhaps, wholly Amy Gregg's fault that her disposition was so
warped. She had received bad advice from some aunts, who had likewise set
the child a bad example in their treatment of Mr. Gregg's second wife,
when he had brought her home to be a mother to Amy.

The poor child suffered so much from the effect of the poison ivy that the
other girls, and not alone those of her own grade, "just _had_ to be sorry
for Amy," as Mary Pease said.

"To think!" said that excitable young girl. "She might even lose her
eyesight if she's not careful. My! it must be dreadful to get poisoned
with that nasty ivy. I'll be afraid to go into the woods the whole
summer."

Of course, it took time for these sentiments to circulate through the
school, and for a better feeling for Amy Gregg to come to the surface; but
the poor girl was laid up for two weeks in Mrs. Sadoc Smith's best
bedroom, and a fortnight is a long time in a girls' boarding school. At
least, it sometimes seems so to the pupils.

What helped change the girls' opinion of Amy, too, was the fact that Mrs.
Tellingham announced in chapel one morning that Mr. Gregg had sent his
check for five hundred dollars toward the rebuilding of the dormitory,
the walls of which now were completed, and the roof on.

She spoke, too, of the reason Amy had left her candle burning in her
lonely room in the old West Dormitory that fatal evening. "We failed in
our duty, both as teachers and fellow-pupils," Mrs. Tellingham said. "I
hope that no other girl who enters Briarwood Hall will ever be neglected
and left alone as Amy Gregg was, no matter what the new comer's
disposition or attitude toward us may be."

To hear the principal take herself to task for lack of foresight and
kindness to a new pupil, made a deep impression upon the school at large,
and when Amy Gregg appeared on the campus again she was welcomed with
gentleness by the other girls. Although Amy Gregg still doubted and shrank
from them for some time, before the end of the term she had her chums, and
was one of a set whose bright, particular star was her one-time enemy,
Mary Pease.

Meanwhile, the older girls--the seniors who were to graduate--had a new
problem. The films for "The Heart of a Schoolgirl" were reported almost
ready. Mr. Hammond was to release them as soon as he could, in order to
bring all the aid to the dormitory fund possible before the end of the
semester.

Now the query was, "How is the picture to be advertised?" Merely the
ordinary billing in front of the picture playhouses and on the display
boards, was not enough. An interest must be stirred of a deeper and
broader nature than that which such a casual manner of advertising could
be expected to engender.

"How'll we do it?" demanded Jennie, with as much solemnity as it was
possible for her rosy, round face to express. "We should invent some
catch-phrase to introduce the great film--something as effective as 'Good
evening! have you used Higgin's Toothpaste?' or, 'You-must-have-a
pound-cake.' You know, something catchy that will stick in people's
minds."

"It has taken years and years to make some of those catchy trademarks
universal," objected Ruth, seriously. "Our advertising must be done in a
hurry."

"Well, we've got to put our best foot forward, somehow," declared Helen.
"Everybody must be made to know that the Briarwood girls have a show of
their own--a five-reel film that is a corker----"

"Hear! hear!" cried Belle. "Wait till the censor gets hold of _that_
word."

"Quite right," agreed Ruth. "Let us be lady-like, though the heavens
fall!"

"And still be natural?" chuckled Jennie. "Impossible!"

"Her best foot forward--one's best foot forward." Mary Cox kept repeating
Helen's remark while the other girls chattered. Mary had a talent for
drawing. "Say!" she suddenly exclaimed. "I could make a dandy poster with
that for a text."

"With what for a text?" somebody asked.

"'Putting One's Best Foot Forward,'" declared Mary Cox, and suddenly
seizing charcoal and paper, she sketched the idea quickly--a smartly
dressed up-to-date Briarwood girl with her right foot advanced--and that
foot, as in a foreshortened photograph--of enormous size.

The poster took with the girls immensely. There was something chic about
the figure, and the face, while looking like nobody in particular, was a
composite of several of the girls. At least, it was an inspiration on the
part of Mary Cox, and when Mrs. Tellingham saw it, she approved.

"We'll just send this 'Big Foot Girl' broadcast," cried Helen, who was
proud that her spoken word had been the inspiration for Mary's clever
cartoon. "Come on! we'll have it stamped on our stationery, and write to
everyone we know bespeaking their best attention when they see the poster
in their vicinity."

"And we'll have new postcards made of Briarwood Hall, with Mary's figure
printed on the reverse," Sarah Fish said.

They sent a proof of the poster to Mr. Hammond, and to his billing of
"The Heart of a Schoolgirl" he immediately added "The Briarwood Girl with
Her Best Foot Forward." Locally, during the next few weeks, this poster
became immensely popular.

The campaign of advertising did not end with Mary's poster--no, indeed! In
every way they could think of the girls of Briarwood Hall spread the
tidings of the forthcoming release of the school play.

Lumberton's advertising space was plastered with the Briarwood Girl and
with other billing weeks before the film could be seen. As every moving
picture theatre in the place clamored for the film, Mr. Hammond had
refused to book it with any. The Opera House was engaged for three days
and nights, a high price for tickets asked, and it was expected that a
goodly sum would be raised for the dormitory right at home.

However, before the picture of "The Heart of a Schoolgirl" came to town,
something else happened in the career of Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill
which greatly influenced her future.

CHAPTER XXIV

"SEEING OURSELVES AS OTHERS SEE US"

"I want to tell you girls one thing," said Jennie Stone, solemnly. "If I
get through these examinations without having so low a mark that Miss
Brokaw sends me down into the primary grade, I promise to be good
for--for--well, for the rest of my life--at Briarwood!"

"Of course," Helen said. "Heavy would limit that vow to something easy."

"Perhaps she had the same grave doubt about being able to be good that the
little boy felt who was saying his prayers," Belle said. "He prayed: 'Dear
God, please make me a good boy--and if You don't at first succeed, try,
try again!'"

"But oh! some of the problems _are_ so hard," sighed Lluella.

"'The Mournful Sisters' will now give their famous sketch," laughed Ruth,
as announcer. "Come, now! altogether, girls!"

"'Knock, knock, knock! the girls are knocking----Bring the
hammers all this way!'"

"Never mind, Ruthie Fielding," complained Lluella. "We don't all of us
have the luck you do. All your English made up for you in that
scenario----"

"And who is _this_ made up, I'd be glad to have somebody tell me?"
interposed Jennie. "Oh, girls! tell me. Do you all see the same thing I
do?"

The crowd were strolling slowly down the Cedar Walk and the individual the
plump girl had spied had just come into view, walking toward them. He was
a tall, lean man, "as narrow as a happy thought," Jennie muttered, and
dressed in a peculiar manner.

Few visitors came to Briarwood save parents or friends of the girls. This
man did not even look like a pedler. At least, he carried no sample case,
and he was not walking from the direction of Lumberton.

His black suit was very dusty and his yellow shoes proved by the dust they
bore, too, that he had walked a long way.

"He wears a rolling collar and a flowing tie," muttered the irrepressible
Jennie. "Goodness! it almost makes me seasick to look at them. _What_ can
he be? A chaplain in the navy? An actor?"

"Actor is right," thought Ruth, as the man strutted up the walk.

The girls, who were attending Ruth and Ann and Amy Gregg a part of the way
to Mrs. Sadoc Smith's, gave the strange man plenty of room on the gravel
walk, but when he came near them he stopped and stared. And he stared at
Ruth.

"Pardon me, young lady," he said, in a full, sonorous tone. "Are you Miss
Fielding?"

The other girls drifted away and left Ruth to face the odd looking person.

"I am Ruth Fielding," Ruth said, much puzzled.

"Ah! you do not know me?" queried the man.

"No, sir."

"My card!" said the man, with a flourish.

Jennie whispered to the others: "Look at him! He draws and presents that
card as though it were a sword at his enemy's throat! I hope he won't
impale her upon it."

Ruth, much bewildered, and not a little troubled, accepted the card. On it
was printed:

AMASA FARRINGTON
Criterion Films

"Goodness!" thought Ruth. "More moving picture people?"

"I had the happiness," stated Mr. Farrington, "of being present when the
censors saw the first run of your eminently successful picture, 'The Heart
of a Schoolgirl,' Miss Fielding, and through a mutual friend I learned
where you were to be found. I may say that from your appearance on the
screen I was enabled to recognize you just now."

Ruth said nothing, but waited for him to explain. There really did not
seem to be anything she could say.

"I see in that film, Miss Fielding," pursued Mr. Farrington, "the promise
of better work--in time, of course, in time. You are young yet. I believe
you attend this boarding school?"

"Yes," said Ruth, simply.

"From the maturity of your treatment of the scenario I fancied you might
be a teacher here at Briarwood," pursued the man, smirking. "But I find
you a young person--extremely young, if I may be allowed the observation,
to have written a scenario of the character of 'The Heart of a
Schoolgirl.'"

"I wrote it," said Ruth, for she thought the remark was a question. "I had
written one before."

"Yes, yes, yes!" exclaimed Mr. Farrington. "So I understand. In fact, I
have seen your 'Curiosity.' A very ingeniously thought out reel. And well
acted by the Alectrion Company. Rather good acting, indeed, for _them_."

"I have not seen it myself," Ruth said, not knowing what the man wanted or
how she ought to speak to him. "Did you wish to talk to me on any matter
of importance?"

"I may say, Yes, very important--to yourself, Miss Fielding," he said,
with a wide smile. "This is a most important matter. It affects your
entire career as--- I may say--one of our most ingenious young writers for
the screen."

Ruth stared at him in amazement. Just because she had written two moving
picture scenarios she was quite sure that she was neither famous nor a
genius. Mr. Amasa Farrington's enthusiasm was more amazing than his
appearance.

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