Bobby in Movieland

by Francis J. Finn

This remark sent them all off in good humor.

Bobby went to confession before going to the suite. He confessed, by the way, every week, and went with Peggy to communion every morning. Also, he lingered to make a special and earnest prayer for that falling star, Bernadette, and I fear that if Bernadette, in the light of what happened that evening, were to have learned the import of that prayer, she would have waylaid Bobby and given him a sound spanking.

“O good Lord”—such was the import of Bobby’s prayer—“bring that nice young lady, Bernadette Vivian, to her senses; and do it in a hurry so that to-morrow we can shoot that scene the way it ought to be shot, and be done with it.”

That night the lovers met and there were five minutes of unbroken bliss. In these five minutes they plighted their troth over and over. Nothing in the heavens above or the earth beneath or the waters under the earth could ever dissever their souls. In the next five minutes there arose a slight difference about the style of the engagement ring; and before the quarter was quite ended both were in a towering rage and vowed repeatedly never, never to look upon each other’s face again. Then the idol of her heart went out and got drunk—a weakness of his of which Bernadette was entirely ignorant—and left his fond one bathed in tears.

It was a bad night for Bobby, too. An inconsiderate friend of Compton’s, Benny Burnside, meeting Bobby as he returned from confession, asked the boy whether it was true that his mother was dead.

“Of course she is not dead,” answered Bobby resolutely.

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear it! So that woman they found dead in the woods at San Luis Obispo was not your mother after all,” continued the admired one of every flapper in the land. It was he who had said that Compton was a gay Lothario.

Bobby’s lips quivered.

Thereupon Mr. Benny Burnside told him, not without some embroidery to make the story more convincing, of the reports of the detective agency on the case. If Mr. Burnside did not fully convince the lad of his mother’s death, it was not due to any lack of effort on his part.

Bobby, on retiring, had several sleepless hours. Faith struggled with alleged fact, and the struggle brought with it agony and tears. But the boy was not alone in the fight. To his aid he summoned the Mother of God, his guardian angel, his patron saint. Before midnight confidence returned; and Bobby, his face still wet with tears, fell into a dreamless sleep.