The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound Part 8

"Who, Fripp and Jagle? No, they wouldn't be allowed to ride on the ambulance. But they got a taxicab and went off in that. I heard Jagle say to the ambulance surgeon, that he was a doctor, and that he'd attend his friend when he got him home."

"Is Jagle a doctor?" asked Alice. "He didn't look like one."

"He's a _sort_ of doctor," Russ replied. "I think he's a quack, myself.

I wouldn't have him for a sick cat. But he calls himself a doctor and surgeon. So that's all that happened."

"It was enough, anyhow," remarked Ruth. "I don't like to see anybody hurt."

"I'm not so sure that fellow _was_ hurt," said Russ, slowly.

"What do you mean?" Alice asked, curiously.

"Well, he might have _imagined_ he was. I guess he was pretty well scared at seeing that car come down on him. But I watched when he was put in the ambulance and he seemed as well as either of his friends.

Only he kept insisting that he could not walk."

"It was certainly a queer accident," said Alice. "But, in spite of the fact that he is a bad man, and wants to make trouble for daddy, I hope he isn't seriously hurt."

"I don't believe it is serious," said Russ. "But it might easily have been, though, if he had fallen in front of the car instead of away from it."

"Well, there is nothing that hasn't its good side," remarked Ruth.

"Emerson's idea of the law of compensation works out very nicely in this case."

"Kindly translate, sister mine," invited Alice, laughingly.

"Why, you know Emerson holds that one advantage makes up for each defect. In this case Merley has had an accident--a defect. That may cause him to stop annoying daddy--a distinct advantage to us."

"Oh, Ruth, how queer you are!" exclaimed Alice with a laugh. "I never heard of such an idea."

"Who was this Emerson--a moving picture fellow?" asked Russ.

"No, he was a great writer," explained Ruth. "I'll let you take one of his books."

"I wish you would," said Russ, seriously. "I never had much of a chance to get an education, but I like to know things."

"So do I," agreed Ruth. "I never tire of Emerson."

Mr. DeVere was surprised when he heard about the accident to Merley.

"I can't understand it," said the girls' father. "He must have been hurt, and yet--er--was he in a sensible condition, Russ?"

"Oh, yes, he seemed to be himself, all right," the young moving picture operator replied, thoughtfully. "I haven't gotten to the bottom of it myself."

And indeed it developed that there was a strange plot back of the accident--a plot which involved the moving picture girls in an amazing way, as will soon appear.

But puzzle over the odd accident as they might, neither Mr. DeVere, his daughters, nor Russ could understand what it involved.

"At any rate, as you say, Ruth," the actor remarked with a smile, "there is some compensation. He may not annoy me for some time; and, meanwhile, I may think of a plan to prove I really paid that money."

"I hope so, Daddy!" she exclaimed. "Is your throat any better?"

"Yes, much," he replied with a smile. "Dr. Rathby is going to try a new kind of spray treatment, and I had the first one this afternoon. It helped me wonderfully."

"That's good!" exclaimed Alice.

The next day's papers contained a slight reference to the accident. It was not important enough to warrant much s.p.a.ce, and about all that was said was that Merley claimed to have received an injury that made him helpless, though its nature was a puzzle to the physician sent around by the street car company.

"Well, if he's helpless, and the Lord knows I wish that to no man," said Mr. DeVere, reverently, "he will not come here bothering you girls again. If he confines his attacks to me I do not so much mind, but he must leave you alone."

"That's what I say!" cried Russ.

When Mr. DeVere and his daughters arrived at the moving picture studio that afternoon, for they were not to report until then, they found notices posted, requesting all members of the company to remain after rehearsal to hear an "important announcement."

"I wonder what it can be?" said Ruth.

"Probably it's about the new plans Mr. Pertell has been working on,"

suggested Alice.

"I think so," Russ said. He knew something of them, but had not permission to reveal them.

And this proved to be the case. After the day's work was ended, and it included the filming of several scenes for important dramas, Mr. Pertell called his players together, and said:

"Ladies and gentlemen--also Tommy and Nellie, for you will be in on this, I hope--we are going to leave New York City again, and be together in a new place to make a series of plays."

"Leave New York!" gasped Miss Pennington.

"I hope we don't go to Oak Farm again!" cried Miss Dixon. "I want to be in some place where I can get a lobster now and then."

"There will be no lobsters at Deerfield!" said Mr. Pertell, with a smile, "unless there are some of the canned variety."

"How horrid!" complained Miss Pennington.

"Will there be deers there?" asked Tommy, with big eyes.

"I think there will, sonny," answered the manager.

"Reindeers--like Santa Claus has?" little Nellie wanted to know.

"Well, I guess so!" laughed Mr. Pertell. "At any rate, I plan to take you all there."

"Where is Deerfield, if one may ask?" inquired Miss Dixon, pertly.

"Deerfield is a sort of backwoods settlement, in one of our New England States," explained the manager. "It is rather isolated, but I want to go there to get some scenes for moving pictures with good snow, and ice effects as backgrounds."

"Are there good hotels there?" Miss Pennington demanded.

"We are going to stop in a big hunting lodge, that I have hired for the occasion," Mr. Pertell replied. "I think you will like it very much."

"Hold on! One moment!" exclaimed Mr. Sneed, the grouchy actor. "You may count me out of this! I shall go to no backwoods, in the middle of winter, and freeze. I cannot stand the cold. I shall resign at once!"