Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1924-Jan 1925)

f: ^MOTION PICTURf 01 I MAGAZINE L excitement obvious as the on her lips. "I know I —but I'm going to do it !" came out with it. "Well, think of is for us to go — — " she gulped over this unthinkable action — movies and see 'The — The Dark Woman's of course, that he had made himself doubly clear. What she was really drinking in was the magic of city life. She had yearned for it a great deal lately. "By the way, Miss Hope, after what you've heard about me, perhaps you're going to let me show you a few things ?" "I was hoping you'd ask me," she said, half-shyly. "And now that you know what a naughty, naughty boy I am, what's your idea of the first and most devilish thing we can do together?" Hope looked at him, her dreadful disclosure hovered oughtn't even to think of itShe sighed guiltily and then about the worst thing: I can together "to the Secret !' " Awful perspiration stood out in beads on her forehead as she felt for the side of the barn and leaned gratefully against it in the agony of her wickedness. It is doubtful if she even heard Orkney mutter something like, "Well, I'll be damned !" Brodie and Hank returned, the latter with a strange light in his eyes and a marked unsteadiness in his legs. Brodie gave him a questionable look. "It's all right," said Orkney. "We're going out together tonight ! Aren't we, Hope ?" Hope nodded solemnly. "Meet me — here — at eight then, Hope !" The two men hurried away. "Oh," said Hope half-disgustedly to Hank. "You smell just like that Parana that Pop and Aunt Charity take after meals — Pop always said you were drinking his." "Shay !" began Hank, half-angrily lunging for his sister. "I haven't time for anything else here — I'm going in to curl my hair for the first time in my life ! I'll show these people what real wickedness is !" And strangely, Miles Orkney was thinking along the same line himself. IV Steve Brodie had come into Hank Brown's arid life like a rippling river, for thru him he had come in contact with the first real pleasure he had known. He had always hungered for any experience outside his own narrow pathway. The boy was not normal because of the crushing and cowering discipline and undiluted righteousness that had been meted out to him ever since he could remember. He had been told so repeatedly that he was bad that he was convinced of it and longed to exercise his talent in this direction. Thus Steve Brodie thought that he had launched an invincible counter-attack on the chief sword-wielder against the liquor interests. With his smooth tongue, natty appearance and genial manner, Brodie knew that Orkney couldn't fail to attain his object. And the young people seemed certainly on the downward path that night when they both practically defied Aunt Charity. Hope took the lead as usual and Hank, the weakling, followed suit in his sullen way. Instead of climbing over the roof and down the grape arbor, he walked straight out the door and down-town to meet Brodie and "the boys." Hope waited until the town clock struck eight and then she, too, put on her ridiculously plain bonnet and walked out the side door and slammed it behind her ! Aunt Charity, unequal to such onslaughts of Satan as this, tasted to the very bottom of her Parana bottle. Just before reaching the barn, Hope felt as tho some unseen hand halted her. She paused only a second and then jerked herself away from it. "No, I'm going to do it!" she muttered. Mr. Orkney was there whistling a plaintive air and when Hope came up he greeted her as tho he had been a The fellows he met in the back of Bro fice he. sporty, to be were older than But they were Hank liked with them 1 48 ae. «t <H\