Picture-Play Weekly (Apr-Oct 1915)

Mavis of the Glen (UNIVERSAL' By Edna Sylvester Kerr Mavis is a sweet, unaffected girl who married a society man. In the wild beauty of her seashore home she is a very picturesque figure. But when her husband takes her from it, into the society life of a large city, complications arise. You may read what they are in this story based on the Universal Film Company's picture play, featuring Ella Hall as Mavis, and Robert Leonard as her husband. The rest of the cast was: Henry Marsh Harry Carter Old Peter Robert Chandler DY Jove, tliat's where I'm going!" Robert Graham, one of a yachting partj^ that was returning to New York after a two weeks' cruise, stood at the rail of the beautiful white craft, his eyes fixed on a glen that the yacht was just then passing along the shore. Graham was fond of fishing; he had tried to interest the men and women who were his companions on the yachting trip in the sport, but in vain. The}' cared more for bridge playing, dancing, and suchlike amusements of society ; and by one and all his frequent suggestions that they spend a day in angling had been laughed to scorn. As a result. Bob Graham had been forced Jo content himself with dropping a line overboard in such harbors as the jacht last anchor in; and, of course, his luck had amounted to nothing. The right spot for fishing was a regular bank — • some place that was known to a seasoned old fisherman. And from the upturned boat and the nets drying on the poles outside a small, white-painted cottage on the beach, it was endent that such a fisherman lived here in this glen. ■'Stop the yacht for me,'' the joung man requested of Cataret, the owner of the .craft, "and put me ashore in the tender. I'm going to get in one good day's fishing, before this trip's over. Til hire the man who lives in that cottage to take me out in his boat. B3--b}-! See you in Xew Y'ork to-morrow night. Til come on by train from here, and get into to'mi almost as soon as j-ou do." As he alighted, suit case in hand, from the j-acht's trim latmch at the entrance of the glen, Graham whipped oft his hat in surprise. Facing him was a girl in a sunbon net and a simple calico frock. A pretty girl she was, Graham thought at first. But he quickl} changed his mind about that. She. was genuinely beautiful. He mentally reviewed the women of his own set whom he had just left on board that yacht. Thej were all charming, for Cataret was a man who had an eye for feminine beauty, and no one could ever accuse the women who made up his parties of being plain. But this simph" gowned girl of the open surpassed them as the sun a candle's ray — and Graham's pulses were wildly beating, from an emotion he had never felt before in all the thirty-one j-ears of his life, as he spoke : "Could you tell me, please, who lives in this cottage?" 'T live in it," the girl made answer, returning his gaze frankl}' out of her wide, blue eyes, "'with my foster father, whom people call Old Peter. If you wish to see him, I will call him." But she was saved the trouble of doing so. A man with a seamed and weather-bronzed, but kindl}-, face, who was garbed in a pair of fisherman's overalls and a sou'wester, emerged from the door of the cottage and walked toward them. "I have just come from that j-acht," explained Graham to him, with a nod of his head toward the private vessel that was steaming awaj\ 'T want some fishing, and I thought j-ou might be able to take me out with }'OU. Of course, I would expect to pay 3-ou for your trouble." Old Peter replied that he was agreeable to the proposal. He spoke, Graham noticed, with the vocabulary of an educated man ; and this made the 3"0ung Xew Yorker wonder. But, in the dzys that followed, he learned the explana tion. Graham had changed his mind about rejoining his friends in the city on the morrow, the day he had first set ej-es on the girl of the glen. He had engaged a room at the inn in the nearb}' village, and set himself to the task of winning ]\Iavis, as he found out her name was. For he had made up his mind that he would not leave there until he could take her with him as his wife. Old Peter told him how he himself came to be living in that glen, and the storj of his adoption of Mavis as his foster daughter. The fisherman had once been a member of society, as was Graham. But, 3-ears before, he had sickened of the artificiality around him. He had given up the life of glitter and show, to come here to this glen to spend the rest of his days close to nature, in peace and quiet. iMavis, at that time, had been a httle girl of nine or ten. She had formed the habit of running down from the village to visit the lonely man in his small house on the shore. In time they had become fast friends. Mavis' father was the village drunkard. Her mother was dead. When, one day, her father was killed in a drunken brawl in the village tavern, and Mavis was thrown all alone upon the world, Old Peter had gone before the selectmen of the town and asked to be allowed to adopt her. The request had been granted. And she and the fisherman had lived contentedly together in the cottage in the glen ever since. At the end of a fortnight, Graham returned, hand in hand with IMavis, to the cottage from a walk they had taken together. The girl's ej-es were shining — for she had come to love with her whole heart