“Whoop-la!” yelled Louis, running at breakneck speed towards the door and yelling in his flight. “Hey, dad! she’s going to go.”
“Oh, you are so kind, Mrs. Vernon!” cried Agnes. “Just now papa got a long-distance telephone call from San Luis Obispo. There’s a friend of his there who went to the picture show last night, and he called dad up to tell him what a nice, clean picture it was. He says that it’s a first-run picture. The proprietor of the movie house there generally uses older runs, but there’s some kind of convention in the town this week, and so he engaged this new picture and raised the admission price from twenty to forty cents, and added three matinees. And the man said that if dad wanted to go he would hold five tickets for us. And dad said he would go and take ma and us children, provided you would go. Oh, isn’t that a treat? We’ll start in an hour. Dad thinks that the ride and a picture like that will do you a lot of good.”
“Why didn’t you let me know at first that you couldn’t go unless I went? Indeed I’m sure it will make me happy, if for nothing else than that it will give joy to two of the dearest little children I have ever met.”
And so fifteen minutes later Barbara, Mr. and Mrs. Regan, and the happy children were speeding onward to San Luis Obispo.
CHAPTER XIV
MRS. VERNON ATTENDS A MOVING-PICTURE SHOW AND FINDS IN IT A GREAT LESSON UNTHOUGHT OF BY THE AUTHOR
The lobby of the San Luis Obispo moving-picture house was thronged, and there was a crush at the ticket office. As Regan and his party pushed their way to the entrance, the ticket seller was announcing that the house was sold out.
To get through this unheard-of crowd Mr. Regan was forced to use his elbows freely. Mrs. Vernon and his family, according to his directions, followed him in close single file. None of them had an opportunity to notice the posters and the pictures of various scenes in the much heralded play. Had the lobby been less thronged, it is doubtful whether they would have attended the performance.
“To accommodate all,” cried a strong voice as they reached the ticket taker, “there will be another performance at four o’clock sharp; and until a quarter to four positively no more seats will be sold.”
At two-thirty to the second, but a few minutes after the Regan party had seated themselves, the lights went out and the “News of the Week” was flashed upon the curtain. The assembled crowd, filling every seat, had not come for the “News of the Week”; hence they were in no wise disappointed when it was taken off, with most of the news left out. The manager with a view to the second performance was shortening his program.
There was a moment’s pause, and then there flashed upon the screen the words, “You Hardly Can Tell”; whereupon everybody sat up and adjusted himself for the promised treat.