"Oh, the mean things!" gasped Helen, growing as red as though the joke were aimed directly at herself.
"Cracky!" murmured the fleshy girl, who couldn't help seeing the ridiculous side of it. "Isn't that funny?"
At the moment, too, a thin little tune began to wander from the black box, none other than "The Wearing of the Green." Inside the box was one of those little, old-fashioned Swiss music boxes, and May was industriously turning the crank.
"Register fear, Miss Fielding!" shouted Edith, energetically. "Fear, I say! Don't you realize that you are about to be flung over a cliff and that a mad bull is waiting bel-o-o-w to catch you on his horns? Close up of the bull, please!"
Ruth had been first surprised, then not a little displeased; but she knew instinctively if she showed that this buffoonry offended and troubled her it would only be repeated again and again.
Much better able than her chum, Helen Cameron, to control her features, she began now to smile broadly.
"Girls!" she said aloud to her two friends, "it must be that that girl knows Mr. Grimes personally or has seen him at work. You remember Mr. Grimes, the Alectrion director who filmed our play at Briarwood?"
"And was so nasty to Hazel Gray? I should say!" exclaimed Jennie, instantly falling in with Ruth's attempt to pass the incident off as a joke.
"I think she's nasty-mean," muttered Helen, her black eyes snapping.
"If you played that tune while making a film for me, Miss MacGreggor, I should want to jig," Heavy cried, and started to do a few ridiculous steps in front of the black box.