Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY 7 1 :!still stood open, with nobody blocking his" way upon its threshold. And back : into the house, which offered his only avenue of escape, Charlie galloped. He saw no one in the downstairs hall. 1 *! But before him he saw something else, !,iand that was the stairway leading up 1:ito the second floor of the residence. ^ Two at a time, Charlie mounted those stairs, and burst into a bedroom, where 'Jit was his intention to hide until the \ trouble from which he had escaped — though bereft of his trousers — downstairs should have blown over. Closing the door of the bedroom softly behind him, Charlie turned — and gasped. He saw what at first he took .to be a yoUng lady in fashionable attire confronting him. A young lady who had neither neck nor face, and whose smart, white toque was thus resting on her shoulders ! Charlie raised his battered derby to her. "How do you do?" he murmured uni der his breath. And then he saw, on longer inspection, that it wasn't a young lady at all. It ' was a dressmaker's form, on which the white toque, white tailor-made suit and white fox fur set, which probably comprised the new costume of the young lady of the house that had just come home, had been hung. And, with this discovery, another flashed upon Charlie's mind— of the way he might escape from the house, unmolested by its masculine inmates, who thirsted for his blood, and without causing a riot on the street in his present partial costume. Casting off his derby and his coat, Charlie seized the toque from the form and clapped it on his head. He pulled the dress and fur neck piece and muff from the dummy next, and, five minutes later, clad in the dress and boa, and with his hands thrust into the muff — Charlie Chaplin had become a girl, to all outward appearances ! He strolled, for practice, up and down the room a few times with the proper debutante slouch. And then he opened the door of the bedroom and stepped out into the hall. He came face to face with the crosseyed man's pretty daughter, to whom the costume which he had appropriated from the dressmaker's form belonged. She took one look at Charlie, and burst out laughing. Her mirth in creased, as she continued to regard him. She leaned up against the wall, and then weakly slid down along it to a sitting posture on the floor, the tears rolling down her cheeks. "What's the matter?" Charlie asked Before the mirror of the dressing table in her room, out of which he had .come, Charlie removed his mustache, while shelooked on. And then, sauntering to and fro for her approval, Charlie went downstairs. Asked if he had any farewell message to deliver, Charlie was unable to speakhis adversaries' hands, not emotion, choked him. her anxiously. "It isn't a good disguise, then — and I thought nobody would recognize me in it !" "You — you thought," gasped the girl, pointing to his face, "nobody would see your mustache?" Charlie put up his hand, in surprise, to his upper lip. "Wait till I get you rriy father's shaving things," said she, rising from the floor and wiping her eyes. "After you've shaved that off, I think you'll do. Your disguise is perfect, all but that. You make a very pretty girl." With which compliment, she hastened along the hall and entered another room. In a moment or two, she returned with a shaving brush and cup and a razor. The first person he met there was the cross-eyed man's friend. And he fell for the charming young lady he took Charlie to be — hard. Charlie, escorted by the infatuated recipient of his shy smiles, eyebrow liftings, and shrugs to a chair in the drawing-room of the house, had hard work to keep his face straight. "What are you going to be doing tomorrow night?" the cross-eyed man's friend whispered, as he leaned ardently over the back of Charlie's chair. Charlie choked, and lowered his head. "Shoeing a horse !" he answered faintly. But then, realizing that he must get rid of the man in some way so that he