has built around it. It is peculiar, too, that such a man as he should be so ruled by sentiment. You know how practical he is, and sometimes hard — yet I have seen the tears come to his eyes when he spoke of his love for Ganado.”
“I know,” she said, and they were silent again for a time. “You are a good son, Custer,” she said presently. “I wouldn’t have you any different. I am not so good a daughter. Mother does not want me to go. It is going to make her very unhappy, and yet I am going. The man who loves me does not want me to go. It is going to make him very unhappy, and yet I am going. It seems very selfish; but, oh, Custer, I cannot help but feel that I am right! It seems to me that I have a duty to perform and that this is the only way I can perform it. Perhaps I am not only silly, but sometimes I feel that I am called by a higher power to give myself for a little time to the world, that the world may be happier and, I hope, a little better. You know I have always felt that the stage was one of the greatest powers for good in all the world, and now I believe that someday the screen will be an even greater power for good. It is with the conviction that I may help toward this end that I am so eager to go. You will be very glad and very happy when I come back that I did not listen to your arguments.”
“I hope you are right, Grace,” Custer Pennington said.
On a rustic seat beneath the new leaves of an umbrella tree, a girl and a boy sat beside the upper lily pond on the south side of the hill below the ranch house. The girl held a spray of Japanese quince blossoms in her hand and gazed dreamily at the water splashing lazily over the rocks into the pond. The boy sat beside her and gazed at the girl. For a long time neither spoke.
“Won’t you please say yes?” whispered the boy presently.
“How perfectly, terribly silly you are!” she replied.
“I am not silly,” he said. “I am 20, and you are almost 18. It’s time that we were marrying and settling down.”
“On what?” she demanded.
“Well, we won’t need much at first. We can live at home with mother,” he explained, “until I sell a few stories.”
“How perfectly gorgeristic!” she cried.
“Don’t make fun of me! You wouldn’t if you loved me,” he pouted.
“I do love you, silly! But whatever in the world put the dapper little idea into your head that I wanted to be supported by my mother-in-law?”
“Mother-in-law!” protested the boy. “You ought to be ashamed to speak disrespectfully of my mother.”
“You quaint child!” exclaimed the girl, laughing gayly. “Just as if I would speak disrespectfully of Aunt Mae, when I love her so splendiferously! Isn’t she going to be my mother-in-law?”
The boy’s gloom vanished magically.
“There!” he cried. “We’re engaged! You’ve said it yourself. You’ve proposed, and I accept you. Yes, sure — she’s going to be your mother-in-law!”
Eva flushed.
“I never said anything of the kind. How perfectly idiotical!”
“But you did say it. You proposed to me. I’m going to announce the engagement — ‘Mrs. Mae Evans announces the engagement of her son, Guy Thackeray, to Miss Eva Pennington.’”
“Funeral notice later,” snapped the girl, glaring at him.
“Aw, come now, you needn’t get mad at me. I was only fooling; but wouldn’t it be great, Ev? We could always be together then, and I could write, and you could — could —”
“Wash dishes,” she suggested.
The light died from his eyes, and he dropped them sadly to the ground.
“I’m sorry I’m poor,” he said. “I didn’t think you cared about that, though.”
She laid a brown hand gently over his.
“You know I don’t care,” she said. “I am a catty old thing. I’d just love it if we had a little place all our very own — just a teeny, weeny bungalow. I’d help you with your work and keep hens and have a little garden with onions and radishes and everything, and we wouldn’t have to buy anything from the grocery store, and a bank account, and one sow; and when we drove into the city, people would say, ‘There goes Guy Thackeray Evans, the famous author, but I wonder where his wife got that hat!’”
“Oh, Ev!” he cried laughing. “You never can be serious more than two seconds, can you?”
“Why should I be?” she inquired. “And anyway, I was. It really would be elegantiferous if we had a little place of our own; but my husband has got to be able to support me, Guy. He’d lose his self-respect if he didn’t; and then, if he lost his, how could I respect him? You’ve got to have respect on both sides or you can’t have love and happiness.”
His face grew stern with determination.
“I’ll get the money,” he said; but he did not look at her. “But now that Grace is going away, mother will be all alone if I leave, too. Couldn’t we live with her for a while?”
“Papa and Mama have always said that it was the worst thing a young married couple could do,” she replied. “We could live near her and see her every day; but I don’t think we should all live together. Really, though, do you think Grace is going? It seems just too awful.”
“I am afraid she is,” he replied sadly. “Mother is all broken up about it; but she tries not to let Grace know.”
“I can’t understand it,” said the girl. “It seems to me a selfish thing to do, and yet, Grace has always been so sweet and generous. No matter how much I wanted to go, I don’t believe I could bring myself to do it knowing how terribly it would hurt Papa. Just think, Guy — it is the first break, except for the short time we were away at school, since we have been born. We have all lived here always, it seems, your family and mine, like one big family; but after Grace goes, it will be the beginning of the end. It will never be the same again.”
There was a note of seriousness and sadness in her voice that sounded not at all like Eva Pennington. The boy shook his head.
“It is too bad,” he said, “but Grace is so sure she is right — so positive that she has a great future before her and that we shall all be so proud of her — that sometimes I am convinced myself.”
“I hope she is right,” said the girl, and then, with a return to her joyous self: “Oh, wouldn’t it be spiffy if she really does become famous! I can see just now puffed up we shall all be when we read the reviews of her pictures, like this — ‘Miss Grace Evans, the famous star, has quite outdone her past successes in the latest picture, in which she is ably supported by such well-known actors as Thomas Meighan, Wallace Reid, Gloria Swanson, and Mary Pickford.’”
“Why slight Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin?” suggested Guy.
The girl rose.
“Come on!” she said. “Let’s have a look at the pools — it isn’t a perfect day unless I’ve seen fish in every pool. Do you remember how we used to watch and watch and watch for the fish in the lower pools and run as fast as we could to be the first up to the house to tell if we saw them and how many?”
“And do you remember the little turtles and how wild they got?” he put in. “Sometimes we wouldn’t see them for weeks, and then we’d get just a glimpse so that we knew they were still there. Then, after a while, we never saw them again, and how we used to wonder and speculate as to what had become of them!”
“And do you remember the big water snake we found in the upper pool, and how Cus used to lie in wait for him with his little 22?”
“Cus was always the hunter. How we used to trudge after him up and down those steep hills there in the cow pasture while he hunted ground squirrels, and how mad he’d get if we made any noise! Gee, Ev, those