"You generally get that way when you fall into the water," remarked Alice, calmly. Then she told of the accident.
"Oh, what a narrow escape!" breathed Ruth, sinking into a chair. "You quite frighten me!"
"You need not be frightened—now—it's all over," and Alice was quite cool about it.
Nothing worse than a slight headache followed her experience in the brook, but as much fuss was made over her, and as many kind inquiries made, after the story became known, as though she had been seriously injured.
Mr. Pertell, after duly saying how sorry he was at the occurrence, expressed his satisfaction over the fact that Russ had made a film of the happening, and at once set to work to devise a plot and play in which it would fit. As Alice had guessed, he had to have other water scenes, and some in which a boat figured, and Paul and Alice were called on again to go through some "stunts," on the mill stream. Thus a pretty little play was made out of what had been an accident. And, more often than once is that really done in the moving picture world.
Rather quiet days followed at Oak Farm. A number of rural plays were acted and filmed, and word came back from New York, where the first films had been sent for development and printing, that the reels were most successful. The one where Mr. Bunn was wet with the hose was particularly good, so said Mr. Pertell's agent.
"But I'll never go through such a thing again," declared the Shakespearean actor.
The affairs of the Apgar family did not improve with time. Squire Blasdell paid several visits to the farm, and one day, seeing Sandy looking particularly gloomy, Ruth asked him what the trouble was.
"The squire is gettin' ready to sell off the farm," he replied. "He's goin' t' foreclose that mortgage. I've tried all the ways I know to raise that four thousand dollars; but I can't!"
"I wish we could help," said Ruth, sympathetically, as she thought of the days of their own poverty, when everything seemed so black.