Motion Picture Classic (May 1921 - Dec 1927)

CLASSIC other answers ; when one suffers, the other hastens to her aid ! Thus I knit my soul to your soul !” And she pinned the First Award onto my blouse, and I tell you I had a queer feeling in my knees as tho they wanted to bend, American or not ! Afterwards, just as she was going, Oluf gave me a locket with the Kosnian coat-of-arms and her initials in diamonds on it. I never dreamed, when I fastened it round my neck that evening just to see how it looked, that that locket was going to break a woman’s heait, bring me into danger, and But I’m getting ahead of things. You see, Oluf had left the Madame’s on the day school ended, but I was staying on till my Aunt Ollie from Marietta, Ohio, arrived to get an apartment, and be my chaperon. It was awfully lonesome without the girls talking and laughing in half a dozen languages and with Oluf’s hair receiver standing on her bureau with a few pale brown hairs trailing out of it, and the head they’d come from far away. Next door at the English Embassy the Being “royalty" in an ancient ancestral hall has its drawbacks for a free and independent girl like Ruth Townley together and got to be great friends, without my finding out anything about her. She never talked of her folks, or the place she came from, and it wasn’t till the day before graduation that it. came out that she was a really truly princess and would succeed to the throne of Kosnia some day when her old grandfather got thru sitting on it. A princess ! And we had shared face powder and curling kids and she had run my ribbons in my lingerie for me with her own royal hands ! “Well, Your Majesty,’’ I said when I got my breath. “I dont know whether to kneel and kiss your hand or pull my forelock. Why on earth didn’t you tell the world before this? What’s the idea of keeping your crown under your hat, as it were ?’’ “Oh, you dear Ruth Townlee!’’ said Oluf, kissing me, “it has been such great pleasure to be just a real girl and not a princess. This year with you has been the happiest of my life — you do not know how it is to be always stared at and bowed to ; to have to dress and go to stupid balls, and never, never have a true friend who dares to tell you that you have got too much powder on your nose !” “No, I dont know,” I admitted, “but I wouldn’t mind trying it for a while. I think a crown would be very becoming to me.” “You would make a wonderful Queen,” Oluf said, “with your soglorious Titian hair and your beauty, but I fear me you would find it very tiresome. For example — ” and she blushed and glanced at the picture of a handsome foreign-looking man she always kept on her bureau, “you cannot always marry the man you desire to. A queen must remember the necessities of her country before all .else.” She drew herself up very tall and held her head high, and looked every inch of her five feet nothing a queen. Then afterwards she forgot to act queenly and told me all about him; for all the world like Maisie Dolittle back home telling how she felt about Tod Hunter. It seems he was Prince Gregory of Masavania, another demi-tasse kingdom that lay on one side of Kosnia, and they were in love, and only waiting for the consent of Prince Valdemir, the ruler of Prebilof, the half portion country on the other side of Kosnia, to announce their engagement. “What’s he got to do with it?” I asked. “How does he get that way, butting in ?’’ “Oh, you delicious Ruth Townlee!” Oluf cried, kissing me again, “butten-in is ver’ good ! But it is necessary that Valdemir should be pleased or he might make war on Kosnia ! However, I think me it is all right, and I shall go home to be soon married. And when I am I shall send for my dear Iriend to‘ come to see me — wait !” She ran to her bureau and came back with her jewel box, from which she took a round thing with a piece of satin ribbon attached that looked like the First Award they give at the Poultry Shows back home. “Behold, the Order of the Pledge of a Friend! Those who wear that are joined by a tie, no matter how many miles lie between. When one calls, the ( Fifty-three)