"Oh, yes, if you include the road companies of the barn-storming days, perhaps," admitted Mr. DeVere. "But I refer to the real art of the drama, Alice. However, let us not discuss it. The subject is too painful. I have decided to take up the work, since I can do nothing else on account of my unfortunate voice--and I will do my best in the movies. It is due to myself that I should, and it is due to you girls that I provide for you in any way that I can."

"Oh, Dad!" exclaimed Ruth. "It is too bad if you have to sacrifice your art to mere bread and b.u.t.ter."

"Tut! Tut!" he exclaimed, smiling and holding up a chiding hand. "I don't look at it that way at all. I am not so foolish. Art may be a very nice thing, but bread and b.u.t.ter is better. We have to live, my dear. And, after all, my art is not so wonderful. I hope I have not exaggerated my worth to myself. I am very willing to try this new line, and I am very glad that Alice suggested it. Only it--it was rather a shock--at first. Now let us consider."

They talked it all over, and Alice went more into detail as to what she had seen at the moving picture theatre. Mr. DeVere grew more and more interested.

"It is very kind of Russ and Mr. Pertell to think of me," he said. "I will go and see this manager to-morrow."

The interview must have been a very satisfactory one, for Mr. DeVere returned from it with a smiling face--something he had not worn often since the failure of his voice.

"Well, Daddy?" queried Alice, as she entered the dining room, where she and Ruth were trying to make the most of a scanty supply of food.

"How was it?"

For answer he pulled out a roll of bills--not a large one, but of a size to which the girls had not been accustomed of late.

"See, it is real money!" he cried, and he struck an att.i.tude of one of the characters in which he had successfully starred. He was the old Hosmer DeVere once more.

"Where did you get it?" asked Ruth, with a little laugh. She foresaw that some of her housekeeping problems bade fair to be solved.

"It is an advance on my salary as a moving picture actor," he replied, hoa.r.s.ely, but still with that same gay air. "See, I have put my other life behind me. Henceforth--or at least until my voice promises to behave," he went on, "I shall live, move and have my being on the screen. I have signed a contract with Mr. Pertell--a very fair contract, too, much more so than some I have signed with managers of legitimate theaters. This is part of my first week's salary. I have taken his money--there is no going back now. I have burned my bridges."

"And--are you sorry?" asked Alice, softly.

"No, little girl--no! I'm glad!" And truly he seemed so.

"Tell us about it," suggested Ruth, and he did--in detail.

"Then it wasn't so bad as you expected; was it, Daddy?" asked Alice.

"No, I found many of the company to be very fine characters, and some with exceptional ability. Mr. Wellington Bunn, by the way, is a man after my own heart."

"Oh, yes. He seemed very anxious to play Shakespeare," remarked Alice, with a smile. "I heard Mr. Pertell caution him about not letting Hamlet get into the parlor scene they were presenting," and she laughed at the recollection.

"Of course it was rather new and strange to me," went on Mr. DeVere, "but I dare say I shall get accustomed to it. There were some of the young ladies, though, for whom I felt no liking--Miss Pearl Pennington, who plays light leads, and her friend, Miss Laura Dixon, the ingenue."

"They were in vaudeville until recently," remarked Alice. "So Russ told me. Miss Pennington seemed very pretty."

"Pa.s.sably so," agreed Mr. DeVere. "Well, our living problem is solved for us, anyway. Now I must study my new part. It is to be a sort of society drama, and will be put on in a few days. Mr. Pertell gave me some instructions. I shall have to unlearn many things that are traditional with those who have played all their parts in a real theatre. It is like teaching an old dog new tricks, but I dare say I shall master them."

"You're not really old, Daddy!" said Alice, slipping her arms about him, and nestling her cheek against his.

"There--there!" he returned, indulgently, "don't try to flatter your old father. You are just like your dear mother. Run along now, I must take up this new work. What a relief not to have to declaim my lines! I shall only move my lips, and who knows but, in time, my voice may come back?"

"I hope it will," answered Ruth, with a sigh. Somehow she could not quite bring herself to like her father in moving picture roles. Alice was entirely different.

"But, even if it does come back," said the younger girl, "you may like this new work so well, Dad, that you'll keep at it."

"Perhaps," he a.s.sented. "Here, Ruth, take care of this money--my first moving picture salary," and he handed her the bills.

As he went to his room with the typewritten sheets of his new part, Alice whispered to her sister:

"Hurray! Now we can have a real dinner. I'll go and buy out a delicatessen store."

The meal was a great success--not only from a gastronomic standpoint, but because of the jollity--real or a.s.sumed--of Mr. DeVere. He went over the lines of his new part, telling the girls how at certain places he was to "register," or denote, different emotions.

"Register" is the word used in moving picture scenarios to indicate the showing of fear, hate, revenge or other emotion. All this must be done by facial expression or gestures, for of course no talking comes from the moving pictures--except in the latest kind, with a phonographic arrangement, and with that sort we are not dealing.

"Oh, I'm sure it will be fine!" cried Alice. "Can we go and see you act for the camera, Daddy?"

"Yes, I guess so," he replied. "Would you like it, Ruth?"

"I believe I should!" she exclaimed, with more interest than she had before shown. "It sounds interesting."

"Maybe we'll act ourselves, some day," added Alice.

"Oh, no!" protested her sister. "But let's sit down. The meal is spoiling. Oh!" she cried, with a hasty glance at the table. "Not a bit of salt. I forgot it. Alice, dear, just slip across the hall and borrow some from Mrs. Dalwood."

Humming, in the lightness of her heart, a little tune, Alice crossed to the apartment of their neighbor, not pausing after her first knock at the rear kitchen door.

She heard a rattling among the pots and pans, and naturally supposed Mrs. Dalwood was there.

"May we have some salt?" Alice called, as she entered the kitchen, but the next moment she drew back in surprise and fear, for a strange man, rising suddenly from under the sink, confronted her.

He, too, seemed startled.

"Oh--Oh!" gasped Alice. "Isn't Mrs. Dalwood here?"

"I--I believe not," stammered the man. "I--I'm the plumber--there's a leak----"

"Oh, excuse me," murmured Alice, but even in her embarra.s.sment she could not help thinking that the man looked like anything but a plumber. She backed out of the kitchen, after picking up a salt cellar, and was more startled as she observed the man following her.

CHAPTER XI

RUSS IS WORRIED

Alice was racking her brain to recall where she had seen the man before. If he was a plumber, as he said he was, it might be that he had been in the apartment house on other occasions to repair breaks.

But Alice was not certain.

"And yet I've seen him before, and lately, too," she thought. The girls was in the hall, now. The man, who seemed ill at ease, had followed and stood near.

"The leak wasn't a bad one; it is repaired now," he said.

"I--I didn't know Mrs. Dalwood was out," faltered Alice. And then, as the man turned to go down the stairs, like a flash it came to her who he was.