But a wife was ever a wife. So no matter how old and decrepit Pete was, to Mrs. Pete he still had charm, so why wouldn’t he be alluring to these city girls? Every night Mrs. Pete was Johnny-on-the-spot, when the bus unloaded its quota of fair femininity at the Inn, waiting to lead her errant swain right straight home.
Our friends the Goddefroys still held open house for us. Dear old Mr. Goddefroy told us of the disquieting notes that had crept into Cuddebackville’s former tranquil life, due to our lavish expenditures the first summer—told Mr. Griffith he was “knocking the place to hell.”
But they still loved us. In a smart little trap they’d jog over to location bringing buckets of fresh milk and boxes of apples and pears. Toward late afternoon of a warm summer day, when working close to their elaborate “cottage,” the “Boss” would appear with bottles of Bass’s Ale, and bottles of C-and-C Ginger Ale, both of which he’d pour over great chunks of ice into a great shining milk bucket—shandygaff! Was it good? For the simple moving picture age in which we were living we seemed to get a good deal out of life.
We enjoyed the other social diversions of the year before—canoeing, motoring, table-tipping. But one night, the night on which the Macpherson magicians broke up Mr. Griffith’s beautiful sleep, nearly saw the end of table-tipping.
Retiring early after a hard day David was awakened by noisy festivities downstairs, and getting good and mad about it he rapped a shoe on the floor. The group on occult demonstration bent, thinking how wonderfully their spooks were working, instead of quieting down became hilarious. The morning found them much less optimistic about spirit rapping.
We did an Irish story of the days when the harp rang through Tara’s Hall—the famous “Wilful Peggy”—in which pretty Mary never looked prettier nor acted more wilfully. But the something that had happened to Mary since our first visits to Cuddebackville made her a different Mary now.
One day we were idling over by the Canal bank when, with the most wistful expression and in the most wistful tone, Mary spoke, “You know, Mrs. Griffith, I used to think this canal was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen, and now it just seems to me like a dirty, muddy stream.”
What had happened to her love’s young dream to so change the scenery for her?
Early that fall we went to Mount Beacon to do an Indian picture. The hotel on the mountain top had been closed, but we dug up the owner and he reopened parts of the place. At night we slid down the mountainside in the incline railway car to the village of Fishkill where we dined and slept at a regular city hotel.
We nearly froze on that mountain top. Playing Indians, wrapped up in warm Indian blankets, and thus draped picturesquely on the mountainside, saved us. Mrs. Smith, not yet Pickford, did an Indian squaw in this picture, which featured a picturesque character, one Dark Cloud, for years model to the artist Remington. Dark Cloud was sixty years old, but had the flexible, straight, slim figure of nineteen. How beautifully he interpreted the Harvest Festival dance!