“That’s what I thought,” agreed Ruth, a little wearily. “Anyway, I wouldn’t say anything about it to the boys for a while, Helen. We’ll wait until Charlie really does something before we complain. Besides, I can’t even be sure it was Charlie I saw. It may be that I’m thinking of him so much that I just naturally see him about me wherever I go.”
“Let’s hope that’s the answer, Ruth dear,” said Helen, going over to her chum and giving her a warm kiss. “In the meantime don’t go worrying your head about it. The two of us together are more than a match for Charlie Reid!”
Ruth was rather glad that Helen had planned to go to a matinée, for that left her perfectly free to attend to the very important business at hand—that of meeting and becoming acquainted with the actors, cameramen and assistant directors with whom she was to be so closely associated during the next few months.
They began to gather in her room shortly after two o’clock.
Edith Lang came first, accompanied by Layton Boardman, and these two both Ruth and Tom met with enthusiasm. They had been associated with the two actors in the making of Ruth’s last picture at Golden Pass and had liked and admired them immensely.
Boardman, who had taken the lead in Ruth’s picture, was a splendid actor of Western parts and a fine fellow as well. Edith Lang was the crippled actress who had given Ruth valuable pointers in an art in which she herself was very proficient.
Crippled as she had been while engaged in Red Cross work during the World War, and so more or less exiled from a profession that had been the breath of life to her, Edith Lang had once more come into her own.
Her part as the cripple in “The Girl of Gold” was a heavy emotional one, calling for exactly the type of acting which had made Edith Lang famous.
“I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see you again,” she told Ruth, grasping the latter’s hands in both her own. “And under such very happy circumstances! My dear Miss Fielding, can you imagine slowly starving to death and then having presented to you a feast sumptuous beyond your wildest imaginings? That is what this rôle means to me!”
There were others gathering in the doorway, and Ruth went to meet them eagerly.