"Silly!" cried Ruth again, but that was all she answered.
What a glorious and home-like place Elk Lodge was! Yes, even better than the best home the moving picture girls had known most of their lives, for they had spent part of the time boarding, as their father traveled about with his theatrical company, and who can compare a home to a boarding house?
Down in the big living room a fire burned and crackled, and gave out spicy odors on the great hearth that took in logs six feet long. And how cheerfully and ruddily the blaze shone out! It mellowed and cheered everyone. Even Mr. Sneed smiled, and stretched out his hands to the leaping flames.
As Ruth and Alice were about to go down, having called to their father across the hall that they were ready for him, there came a knock on their door.
"Come in!" invited Ruth.
"Sorry to trouble you," spoke Miss Pennington, "but have you any cold cream and—er—powder? Our things were left in the other sled—I mean all of those things, and Laura and I can't—we simply can't get along without them."
"I have cold cream," said Alice. "But powder—that is unless it's talcum or rice——"
"That will have to do I guess," sighed the vaudeville actress. "But I did hope you had a bit of rouge, I'm so pale!"
"Never use it!" said Alice quickly. Too quickly, hospitable Ruth thought, for, though she decried the use of "paint," she would not be rude to a guest, and, under these circumstances Miss Pennington was a guest.
"You don't need it," the caller said, with a glance at Alice's glowing cheeks, to whom the wind and snow had presented two damask spots that were most becoming.