Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1920)

Photoplay Magazine ity. He dropped her at her door without any repetition of the invitation he had extended earlier in the evening. Grey l^new how to play the game with woman's pride and woman's curiosity. "That little kitten is going to lose her mittens, I am afraid," he mused as he raced home. ■'I wonder if I s/itill see him again, " ran Evelyn's thoughts. She both hoped and feared that she would. She wanted to be fashionable, and it certainly was an honor to be singled out by Bruce Grey for a whole evening. Mrs. Trude had said it was. On the other hand — those confounded unfashionable Baxter Street ideas of the correct conduct for husbands and wives, histilled into her by generations of strict adherence to them, would not be quieted. "Would you want Henry to want to see I\lrs. Hammond again?" asked the still small voice. Mrs. Henry Langdon refused to acknowledge the protest that leaped up in her heart at the very thought of such a thing. "How silly I am," she reasoned with herself. "If two grown up persons cannot trust each other, what is the use of being married?" She had heard some one else use that argument. But it failed to satisfy her, when, after several hours of waiting, she still could not see the headlights of Henry's car. H.\LF way home to the Hammond estate, which was located in the country some three miles away from the country club, Henry discovered from the cloud of steam that arose from under the hood that all was not well with the flivver. Henry interrupted his attempts to impress his companion with his scintilating cynicism to climb out and investigate matters. In his excitement over the party and Evelyn's eagerness to be gone, he had neglected to fill the radiator with water. There was still a little water left — enough to make a trip the rest of the way to Mrs. Hammond's home in perfect safety, no doubt. But the car was new, it was not yet entirely paid for, and Henry had not reached the stage of violent abandon where he was willing to risk the ruin of his automobile to cut a dashing figure with any \voman. So, instead of going straight on, ho asked Mrs. Hammond to excuse him while he ran down with his bucket to the farm house nestling some quarter of a mile on a cross road, and left the lady sitting alone in the middle of the road. A' Henry approached the yard of the farm house, a huge dog bounded out at him from the gloom of the trees Throwing the pail at the dog, Henry fled to a nearby tree, and started to knee his way up. The dog leaped at him, setting his teeth in Henry's trousers. There was a loud tearing sound and the beast was back on earth again with an alarming portion of Henry's apparel in his teeth. But it was not satisfied with the damage it had done. It sat itself down on its haunches and snarled, white teeth gleaming through the darkness. It remained, and so did Henry, until the gray of morning came, then the creature ambled home. Henry slipped down from the limb where he had been interned, and twisted about to determine what proportion of his clothing was no longer with him. The damage was appalling. He could not return to the fashionable Mrs. Hammond in that condition. Down the road he spied an oil station. He dashed to it, discovered that one of the windows opened easily, and crawled inside. On a nail hung a pair of trousers, many sizes too large for Henry, but anyway whole trousers. Henry slipped into 41 ihem, scribbled a note telling the owner the story of their disappearance, gave his name and address and promised to return them safely — then hurried back to the place where his car had stood. It stood there no more — neither it nor Mrs. Hammond was in sight. Henry's heart leaped into his mouth at the thought of the hundred and one things that might have happened to Mrs. Hammond. Then the rim of the sun crept over the hills and shed its accusing beams in his eyes, and made his heart stop beating altogether. In his anxiety to get out of the predicament in which he had found himself, he had forgotten that there was a sweet young wife who would want to know just why it was that it had taken her husband until morning to see another woman to her home not five miles away. Perhaps it was Henry's "pride" that whispered to Henry that it would be better to make up some gorgeous lie to teil Eve!yn about the evening's happenings instead of coming out with the rather ridiculous truth. The truth would have been so much more sensible. But anyway, when he arrived on foot, swathed in enormous trousers, and sans the Langdon flivver, to meet a tearful wife, he plodded in, breathless and worn, as after a terrific struggle. "I don't know how many of them there were — but they were all armed with guns — ,'' he began, then flowed eloquently, as husbands can and do, into a recountal of a tale of highwaymen that made Mrs. Henry hug the husband of her bosom to her in an ecstasy of pride and horror at the thought of the odds he had overcome. (Continued on page iiy) She lieard her husband remark, '"By Jove, Miss Turner, you re looking awfully pretty today. "