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THE MOTION PICTURE STORY MAGAZINE
not to return home at all. He reeled about the streets for a time, his voice raised in a continuous hoarse declaration of dire and dreadful things to befall his meddling family. Gradually, his excitement was succeeded by a drowsiness that made perambulating an impossibility, and when a dark space beneath some steps seemed to invite him out of the bothering moonlight, he sank down in the shadows and slept heavily and long.
He awakened feeling chilled and altogether wretched. He was sober, but filled with rancor. It was a pity that a man couldn't have a good time and do as he pleased without suffering like this for it ! Anyway, he would go home and take a nap with some comfort.
Mrs. Jenkins had spent a sleepless night, conjuring up a hundred desperate possibilities to account for her husband's absence. When she heard him come in the door, she hastened to him.
"Oh, Robert!" she began.
He cut her short. "Keep those kids quiet," he said roughly. "I'm going to take a nap."
He stretched himself on the couch and dozed off. Mrs. Jenkins, her grief somewhat ameliorated by the knowledge of his whereabouts, took up her market basket, and, with a spiritless admonition to the children to be quiet, started off to make her purchases.
Bobbie and Trixie were very care
THE PLAY
ful not to disturb the sleeping ogre, until two little girl neighbors came bounding in.
"Goody!" cried Bobbie. "Now we can have a play ! I '11 tell you how to act."
1 ' I want to be a fairy ! ' ' exclaimed one of the little visitors, in high glee.
"There ain't no fairies in this play," announced Bobbie. "You sit down here. This chair is a piano ; you play on it; and, Trixie, you are the music teacher and I'm daddy."
They entered into the game with such enthusiasm that the angry voice in the next room smote the noisefilled air. The fun went on, and Robert Jenkins finally arose and started for the field of operations. He stopped in the doorway and looked thru the heavy portieres. In spite of himself he was amused, and he watched the progress of the play. Little by little, he realized that Bobbie was imitating him and going over in mimicry the disgraceful scenes of the previous day. There was the episode of the music teacher; the father, looking on, smiled rather foolishly. There was the episode of the dinner table, the throwing about of the food, the smashing of dishes; the father, looking on, began to get a clearer view of his actions and their effect on others. Then came the episode of the saloon: the wife, played by Trixie, pleading with the staggering drinkcrazed man and recoiling from his blow. Bobbie imitated the bestiality and the brutality of his father in a way to make the man shudder and flush with shame. He was seeing himself as in a looking-glass, and the mirrored image sent a moral nausea thru his soul. This was how his children saw him ! If he should die, this would be the memory he bequeathed to them!
He went back to the couch and buried his face in the cushions. Out of the shaking-up he had received, his thoughts collected in broken bits, and, piece by piece, like the colored fragments in a kaleidoscope, they fell into place and formed the perfect design of a great resolve.