Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Dec 1916)

This story was written from the Photoplay of CLIFFORD HOWARD “’DEARS April 1 is the purtiest month they is!’’ The girl in the calico gown, sitting on the springless wagonseat beside Doc Jenkins, caught at the scarlet-budded branch of mountain maple, blown across the narrow roadway, and laughed aloud — the pure, ringing laugh of joyous youth. At the sound, the man turned his weathercolored face, with its quizzical eyes and kindly mouth, toward her. He had grown old here among his mountains and se:n life very deeply and very simply, as a country doctor must ; but he had never seen anything fairer than this slim, stareyed girl in the faded pink gown, shrunken till it showed every curve and sweet line of her young body, as the seed-case clothes the unfolding bud. ‘‘Lor’! April-gal" — the wistfulness of age, looking at youth, was in his voice. He put one great square-fingered hand on the bright head, burned, by the sunshine of seventeen years, into a dozen shades of umber and tawny orange and ripe gold, and turned her face toward him, solemnly — “if you-all aint the livest ! Whatever got into ye, honey, to make you grow up thisaway ?’’ He was thinking of savage Tim Fagan and his faded, joyless wife, Martha, with her greasy wisp of hair and eternal snuff-stick — strange parents for the Ariel-like creature at his OTVTU? sometimes I pretend I’m side : vivid and eager like a slim flame ; sensitive as no mountain-girl should be ; avid of life The old doctor sighed. He had brought April Fagan into the world, and he loved her as tho she had ‘been his own flesh ; but he was afraid for her — terribly afraid. “I ’low hit’s ’cause I was borned in April, Daddy-Doc !” laughed the girl, gaily. “The whole mountain is livest then, you know — sun a-shinin’, trees coinin’ alive again, little specks o’ blue-an’-yaller posies in the grass 1 Glory ! but I love my mountains then, Daddy-Doc 1” Her eyes grew solemn, with an odd, mysterious glow of wonder. She pointed away toward the low hills, with one small brown paw. “But — I dont sense zvhy — somehow I wist I knowed what’s yonder, DaddyDoc, beyant the hills.” She looked up at him vaguely. “Sometimes I dream ’bout hit,” she said — " ’bout cities with streets an’ stone houses an’ grand stores, where they sell ribbins an’ hats an’ purty gowns, an’ shet my eyes an’ ridin’ in a fine kerridge, all up in a pink satin gownd with a trail, like the one the actress-lady wore at the Forks Op’rv House, an’ all the folks are lookin’ at me, an’ the men are starin’ ” "April!” cried the old man, sharply. “Lor’ !” laughed the gir shamedly, “aint 1 plumb foolish ? Reckon I'd look like crow-bait in one o’ they gownds !” But there was no laughter in Doc Jenkins’ soul. His old mouth shook distressfully, and his old hands fumbled with the reins “You’re a mountain-gal, April,” he said harshly. “We-all o’ the hills belong amongst the hills ; mountain folks an’ valley folks dont mix. Hit’s agin’ God’s laws, gal. The air down yonder in they cities — hit’s pizenous to hill people. Stick to the mountains, where you-all was borned, an’ quit dreamin’ o’ cities, gal, an’ — an’ — city men. Aint thar ’nuff beaus in the mountains, honey ?” “Oh, beaus!” April's shoulders scorned them. “Reckon I dont keer so much for beaus. Thar’s Casper, now” — distaste lurked in her tones — “he's allers a-pesterin’ me to marry him, an’ dad he’s set on Cas sh rugged ( Nineteen )