"I don't see what Mr. Pertell can see in those girls," remarked Miss Pennington, during a lull, when they did not have to be before the camera.

"Neither do I," agreed her friend. "They can't act, and the airs they put on!"

"Shocking!" commented Miss Pennington.

"Come, young ladies!" broke in the voice of the manager. "It is time for you to go on again. And please put a little more vim into your work. I want that play to be a snappy one."

"Humph!" sneered Miss Dixon.

"If he wants more snap he ought to pay more money," whispered her friend. "All he cares about now are those DeVere girls."

"Attention!" called the manager. "Get some good business into this, now. Mr. Switzer, when you come in, after that scene where you apply for work, and can't get it, you must throw yourself into your chair despondently. Do it as though you had lost all hope. You know what I mean."

"Vot you mean? Dot I should sit in it so?" and the German actor plumped himself into the chair in question by approaching it so that he could sit on it in astride, in reverse position, folding his arms over the rounded back.

"No--no, not that way--not as if you were riding a horse!" cried the manager. "Throw yourself into it with abandon, as the stage directions call for."

"Let me show him," broke in the melancholy voice of Wellington Bunn.

Striding into the scene, which had been interrupted to enable this bit of rehearsal to be gone through with, the old Shakespearean actor approached the chair and cast himself into it as though he had lost his last friend, and had no hope left on earth.

"That's the way--that's the idea--copy that!" cried Mr. Pertell, enthusiastically.

But he spoke too soon.

Mr. Bunn had cast himself into the chair with such "abandon" that the chair abandoned him. It fell apart, it disintegrated, it parted company with its legs--all at once--so that chair and actor came to the ground in a heap.

"Oh, my! I am injured! A physician, I beseech you!" moaned Mr. Bunn, while others of the cast rushed to help him to his feet. He was soon pulled from the ruins of the chair.

"Ach! So. I unterstandt now!" exclaimed Mr. Switzer. "I haf your meaning now, of vat 'abandon' is, Mr. Pertell. I am to break der chair ven I sits on it, yes? Dot is 'abandon' a chair. Vot a queer lanquitch der English is, alretty. Vell, brings me annuder chair und I vill abandon it!"

Mr. Pertell threw his hands upwards in a despairing gesture.

"No--no!" he cried. "I didn't mean that way."

"Than vot you means?" asked the German, puzzled.

Meanwhile Wellington Bunn was painfully walking over to a more substantial chair.

"That was all a trick!" he cried. "You did that on purpose, Mr.

Snooks. You provided a broken chair!"

"I did not!" protested the property man. "It was the way you threw yourself into it. What did you think it was made of--iron?"

"I knew something would happen!" observed Mr. Sneed, gloomily. "I felt it in my bones."

"Und I guess me dot he veels it in his bones, now," chuckled Mr.

Switzer. "I am glat dot I, myself, did not abandon dot chair alretty yet."

The play went on after a little delay, and for some time after that the Shakespearean actor was very chary of offering to show other actors how to put "abandon" into their parts.

So far as could be told by an inspection of the negatives of the first important play in which Ruth and Alice had appeared, it was a success. Of course how it would "take" with the public was yet to be learned.

Meanwhile other plays were being considered, and Mr. Pertell repeated his promise, that if "A False Count" was successful he would give Ruth and Alice real "star" parts. They were eager for this, and, now that their father had seen how well they did, he was enthusiastic over them, and very glad to let them go on in the moving picture business.

"Who knows," he said, "but what it may mend the broken fortunes of the DeVere family?"

One evening Russ came over to the apartment of the girls.

"Come on out!" he called, gaily.

"Where?" asked Ruth.

"To the moving pictures. I've got a surprise for you. They are going to try my new invention for the first time."

"May we go, Daddy?" asked Alice, anxiously.

"Yes, I guess so," he answered, absentmindedly, hardly looking up from the ma.n.u.script of a new play he was studying.

So Russ took the girls.

"Oh, let's see what is going on!" begged Ruth, as they came to a halt outside a nearby moving picture theater.

"No, don't bother now!" urged Russ, gently urging them away from the lithographs and pictures in front of the place. "We're a bit late, and we want to get good seats."

He got them inside before they had more than a fleeting glimpse of the advertis.e.m.e.nts of the films that were to be shown, and soon they were comfortably settled.

"I wonder what we'll see?" mused Ruth, looking about the darkened theater. The performance was just about to start.

"I wish we could see our play," spoke Alice. "When do you think we can, Russ?"

"Oh, soon now," he answered, and the girls thought they heard him laugh. They wondered why.

The first film was shown--a western scene, and the girls were not much interested in it, except that Ruth remarked:

"The pictures seem much clearer than usual."

"That's on account of my invention," said Russ, proudly. "I'm glad you noticed it." Then the girls were more interested. A little later, when the t.i.tle of the next play was shown, Ruth and Alice could not repress exclamations of pleased surprise. For it was "A False Count!"

"Why, Russ Dalwood!" whispered Alice. "Did you know this was here?"

"Sure!" he chuckled.

"Oh, that's why you hurried us in without giving us a chance to see what the bill was," reproached Ruth.

"Yes, I wanted to surprise you."

"Well, you did it all right," remarked Alice.