Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper Part 41

STORM CLOUDS THREATEN

The next week Gusty Durgin made her debut as a picture actress. She had pestered Mr. Bane morn, noon, and night at the hotel until finally the leading man obtained Mr. Ans...o...b..s permission to work the buxom waitress into a picture.

"But nothin' funny, Mr. Bane," Gusty begged. "Land sakes! It's the easiest thing in the world to get a laugh out of a fat woman fallin'

down a sand bank, or a fat man bein' busted in the face with a custard pie. I don't want folks to laugh at my fat. I want 'em to forget that I _am_ fat."

"Do you know, Miss Grayling," said Bane, recounting this to Louise, "_that_ is art. Gusty has the right idea. Many a floweret is born to blush unseen, the poet says. But can it be we have found in Gusty Durgin a screen artist in embryo?"

Louise was interested enough to go to the beach early to watch Gusty in a moving picture part.

"A real sad piece 'tis, too," the waitress confided to Louise. "I got to make up like a mother--old, you know, and real wrinkled. And when my daughter (she's Miss Noyes) is driv' away from home by her father because she's done wrong, I got to take on like kildee 'bout it. It's awful touchin'. I jest cried about it ha'f the night when this Mr.

Ans...o...b..told me what I'd have to do in the picture.

"Land sakes! I can cry re'l tears with the best of 'em--you see if I can't, Miss Grayling. You ought to be a movie actress yourself. It don't seem just right that you ain't."

"But I fear I could not weep real tears," Louise said.

"No. Mebbe not. That's a gift, I guess," Gusty agreed. "There! I got to go now. He's callin' me. The boss's sister will have to wait on all the boarders for dinner to-day. An' my! ain't she sore! But if I'm a success in these pictures you can just believe the Cardhaven Inn won't see _me_ pa.s.sin' biscuits and clam chowder for long."

In the midst of the rehearsal Louise saw a figure striding along the sh.o.r.e from the direction of Tapp Point, and her heart leaped. Already there seemed to be a change in the appearance of Lawford.

His sisters, who came frequently to see Louise at Cap'n Abe's, had told her their brother, was actually working in one of his father's factories. He had not even obtained a position in the office, but in the factory itself. He ran one of the taffy cutting machines, for one thing, and wore overalls!

"Poor Ford!" Cecile said, shaking her head. "He's up against it. I'm going to save up part of my pocket money for him--if he'll take it. I think daddy's real mean, and I've told him so. And when Dot Johnson comes I'm not going to treat her nice at all."

Lawford, however, did not look the part of the abused and disowned heir. He seemed brisker than Louise remembered his being before and his smile was as winning as ever.

"Miss Grayling!" he exclaimed, seizing both her hands.

"Lawford! I am _so_ glad to see you," she rejoined frankly. And then she had to pull her hands away quickly and raise an admonitory finger.

"Walk beside me--and be good," she commanded. "Do you realize that two worlds are watching us--the world of The Beaches and the movie world as well?"

"Hang 'em!" announced Lawford with emphasis, his eyes s.h.i.+ning. "Think!

I've never even thanked you for what you did for me that day. I thought Betty Gallup hauled me out of the sea till Jonas Crabbe at the lighthouse put me wise."

"Never mind that," she said. "Tell me, how do you like your work? And why are you at home again?"

"I'm down here for the week-end---to get some more of my duds, to tell the truth. I'm going to be a fixture at the Egypt factory--much to dad's surprise, I fancy."

"Do you like it?" she asked him, watching his face covertly.

"I hate it! But I can stick, just the same. I have a scheme for improving the taffy cutting machines, too. I think I've a streak in me for mechanics. I have always taken to engines and motors and other machinery."

"An inventor!"

"Yes. Why not?" he asked soberly, "Oh! I'm not going to be one of those inventors who let sharp business men cheat them out of their eye-teeth. If I improve that candy cutter it will cost I. Tapp real money, believe me!"

Louise's eyes danced at him in admiration and she dimpled. "I think you are splendid, Lawford!" she murmured.

It was a mean advantage to take of a young man. They were on the open beach and every eye from the lighthouse to Tapp Point might be watching them. Lawford groaned deeply--and looked it.

"Don't," she said. "I know it's because of me you have been driven to work."

"You know that, Miss Grayling? Louise!"

"Yes. I had a little talk with your father. He's _such_ a funny man!"

"If you can find anything humorous about I. Tapp in his present mood you are a wonder!" he exclaimed. "Oh, Louise!" He could not keep his hungry gaze off her face.

"You're a nice boy, Lawford," she told him, nodding. "I liked you a lot from the very first. Now I admire you."

"Oh, Louise!"

"Don't look like that at me," she commanded. "They'll see you.

And--and I feel as though I were about to be eaten."

"You will be," he said significantly. "I am coming to the store to-night. Or shall I go to see your aunt first?"

"You'd better keep away from Aunt Euphemia, Lawford," she replied, laughing gayly. "Wait till my daddy-prof comes home. See him."

"And you really love me? Do you? Please . . . dear!"

She nodded, pursing her lips.

"But eighteen dollars a week!" groaned Lawford. "I think the super would have made it an even twenty if it hadn't been for dad."

"Never mind," she told him, almost gayly. "Maybe the invention will make our fortune."

At that speech Lawford's cannibalistic tendencies were greatly and visibly increased. Louise was no coy and coquettish damsel without a thorough knowledge of her own heart. Having made up her mind that Lawford was the mate for her, and being confident that her father would approve of any choice she made, she was willing to let the young man know his good fortune.

Nor was Lawford the only person to learn her mind. Cap'n Abe said:

"Land sakes! you come 'way down here to the Cape to be took in by a feller like Ford Tapp, Niece Louise? I thought you was a girl with too much sense for that!"

"But what has love to do with sense, uncle?" she asked him, dimpling.

"Hi-mighty! I s'pect that's so. An', anyway, he does seem to improve.

He's really gone to work, they tell me, in one of his father's candy factories."

"But that's the one thing about him I'm not sure I approve of," sighed Louise. "We could have so much better times if he and I could play along the sh.o.r.e this summer and not have to think about hateful money."

"My soul an' body!" gasped the storekeeper, as though she had spoken irreverently about sacred things. "Money ain't never hateful, Niece Louise."

On Sunday I. Tapp did not accompany his family to church at Paulmouth.

Returning, the big car stopped before Cap'n Abe's store and Mrs. Tapp came in to call on Louise. The good woman hugged the girl and wept on her bosom.

"I'm so happy and so sorry, both together, that I'm half sick," she said. "Lawford is so proud and joyful that I could cry every time I look at him. And his father's so cross and unhappy that I have to cry for him, too."

Which seemed to prove that Mrs. Tapp was being kept in a moist state most of the time.