"Where you going?" Sister asked one night, finding Louise prinking before the hall mirror and Grace counting change from her mesh bag.

"Out," answered Louise serenely, pulling her pretty hair more over her ears.

"I know--to the movies!" guessed Brother. "Can't we go? Oh, please, Louise--you said you'd take us sometime!"

"Oh, yes, Louise, can't we go?" teased Sister. "I never went to the movies at night," she added pleadingly.

"You can't go," said Louise reasonably enough. "We didn't go when we were little like you. Don't hang on me, please, Sister; it's too hot."

"I think you're mean!" stormed Brother. "Mother, can't we go to the movies?"

Mother Morrison, who had been upstairs to get her fan, was going with Louise and Grace. She shook her head to Brother's question.

"My dearies, of course you can't go at night," she said firmly. "I want you to be good children and go to bed when the clock strikes eight.

Ralph promised to come up and see you. Kiss Mother good-night, Sister, and be a good girl."

Left alone, Brother and Sister sat down on the front stairs. Molly was out and Daddy Morrison and d.i.c.k had gone to a lodge meeting. Jimmie was studying up in his room and Ralph was out in the barn putting some things away.

"There's that old clock!" said Brother crossly as the Grandfather's clock on the stair landing boomed the hour.

Eight slow, deep strokes--eight o'clock.

Sister settled herself more firmly against the banister railings.

"I'm not going to bed," she announced flatly. "If everybody can go to the movies 'cept me, I don't think it's fair, so there!"

Just how she expected to even things up by refusing to go to bed Sister did not explain. Perhaps she didn't know. Anyway, Brother said he wasn't going to bed either. Ralph came in at half-past eight to find them both playing checkers on the living-room floor.

"Thought you went to bed at eight o'clock," said Ralph, surprised.

"Mother say you might stay up tonight?"

"No, she didn't," admitted Brother, "but she went to the movies with Louise and Grace. Everybody is having fun and we're not."

Ralph didn't scold. He merely closed up the checkerboard and put it away in the book-case drawer with the box of checkers. Then he lifted Sister to his lap and put an arm around Brother.

"Poor chicks, you do feel abused; don't you?" he said comfortably. "But I'll tell you something--you wouldn't like going to the movies at night; you would go to sleep after a little while and lose half the pictures. Now suppose I take you this Sat.u.r.day afternoon. How will that do?"

"Will you take us, Ralph?" cried Sister. "Down to the Majestic?"

This was the largest motion picture theatre in Ridgeway.

"I'll take you both to the Majestic next Sat.u.r.day afternoon," promised Ralph, "if you will go to bed without any more fuss tonight."

Both children were delighted with the thought of an afternoon's enjoyment with Ralph and they trotted up to bed with him as pleasantly as though going to bed were a pleasure. Grownups will tell you it is, but when you are five and six this is difficult to believe.

Unfortunately Brother and Sister were doomed to another disappointment.

Before Sat.u.r.day afternoon came, Ralph remembered that he had promised to play tennis with a friend and he could not break the engagement, because to do so would spoil the afternoon for eight or ten people who counted on him for games.

"I'm just as sorry as I can be," Ralph told Brother and Sister earnestly. "I don't see how I could forget I promised Fred Holmes to play with him. If you want to wait another week for me, I'll give you the money for ice-cream sodas."

Grandmother Hastings and Mother Morrison had gone to the city, the girls had company, Molly was lying down with a headache--there seemed to be no one to take the children to the matinee.

"I guess we'll have to go buy sodas," agreed Brother disconsolately.

"Only if I don't go to movies pretty soon, I'll--I'll--I don't know what I'll do!"

"I know," said Sister, dimpling mischievously. "I'll tell you, Roddy."

"You be good, Sister," warned Ralph, eyeing her a bit anxiously. "I couldn't take a naughty little girl to the movies, you know."

CHAPTER XIV

TWO IN TROUBLE

Ralph knew that Sister could put queer ideas into Brother's head, and he hoped that the fun of going downtown, and buying ice-cream soda at the drug store, might cause Sister to forget whatever she had in mind.

When he came home from his tennis game he found both children playing in the sandbox, and as they were very good the rest of that afternoon and evening and all day Sunday, Ralph decided that Sister was not going to be naughty or get Brother to help her to do anything she should not.

Monday evening Mother and Daddy Morrison went through the hedge into Dr. Yarrow's house to visit the doctor and his wife. Brother and Sister were told to run in and visit Grandmother Hastings until eight o'clock, their bedtime.

"Can we take Brownie?" begged Sister. "Grandmother says he is the nicest dog!"

So Brownie, who was now three times the size he had been when Ralph brought him home in the basket, was allowed to go calling, too.

"Grandma," said Sister, when Grandmother Hastings had answered their knock on her screen door, and had hugged and kissed them both.

"Grandma, couldn't we go to the movies?"

Now Grandmother Hastings was a darling grandmother who loved to do whatever her grandchildren asked of her. It never entered her dear head that Mother Morrison might not wish Brother and Sister to go to the movies at night. She only thought how they would enjoy the pictures, and although she disliked going out at night herself, she said that she would take Brother and Sister.

"We can't go downtown to the Majestic," she said, "for that is too far for me to walk. We'll have to go over to the nice little theatre on Dollmer Avenue. If we go right away, we can be home early."

Sister lagged a little behind her grandmother and brother as they started for the theatre. She was stuffing Brownie into her roomy middy blouse. He was rather a large puppy to squeeze into such a place, but Sister managed it somehow. Grandmother Hastings supposed that the dog had been left on the porch.

The theatre was dark, for the pictures were being shown on the screen when they reached it, and Grandmother Hastings had to feel her way down the aisle, Brother and Sister clinging to her skirts. The electric fans were going, but it was warm and close, and Grandmother wished longingly for her own cool parlor. But Brother and Sister thought everything about the movie theatre beautiful.

"Do you suppose Brownie likes it?" whispered Brother, who sat next to Sister. Grandmother was on his other side.

"He feels kind of hot," admitted Sister, who could not have been very comfortable with the heavy dog inside her blouse. "But I think he likes it."

Brownie had his head stuck halfway out, and he probably wondered where he was. It was so dark that there was little danger of anyone discovering him. A dog in a motion-picture house is about as popular, you know, as Mary's lamb was in school. That is, he isn't popular at all.

Brownie might have gone to the movies and gone home again without anyone ever having been the wiser, if there had not been a film shown that night that no regular dog could look at and not bark.

"Oh, look at the big cat!" whispered Sister excitedly.

Surely enough, a large cat sat on the fence, and, as they watched, a huge collie dog, with a beautiful plumy tail, came marching around the corner.