Bab - A Sub Deb - Page 49/77

Jane Raleigh came over to see me the day after I came home, and I read

her some of the Love seens. She posatively wept with excitement.

"Bab," she said, "if any man, no matter who, ever said those things to

me, I'd go straight into his arms. I couldn't help it. Whose going to

act in it?"

"I think I'll have Robert Edeson, or Richard Mansfield."

"Mansfield's dead," said Jane.

"Honestly?"

"Honest he is. Why don't you get some of these moveing picture actors?

They never have a chance in the Movies, only acting and not talking."

Well, that sounded logicle. And then I read her the place where the

cruel first husband comes back and finds her married again and happy,

and takes the Children out to drown them, only he can't because they can

swim, and they pull him in instead. The curtain goes down on nothing but

a few bubbles rising to mark his watery Grave.

Jane was crying.

"It is too touching for words, Bab!" she said. "It has broken my heart.

I can just close my eyes and see the Theater dark, and the stage almost

dark, and just those bubbles coming up and breaking. Would you have to

have a tank?"

"I darsay," I replied dreamily. "Let the other people worry about that.

I can only give them the material, and hope that they have intellagence

enough to grasp it."

I think Sis must have told Carter Brooks something about the trouble I

was in, for he brought me a box of Candy one afternoon, and winked at me

when mother was not looking.

"Don't open it here," he whispered.

So I was forced to controll my impatience, though passionately fond of

Candy. And when I got to my room later, the box was full of cigarettes.

I could have screamed. It just gave me one more thing to hide, as if a

man's suit and shirt and so on was not suficient.

But Carter paid more attention to me than he ever had before, and at

a tea dance sombody had at the Country Club he took me to one side and

gave me a good talking to.

"You're being rather a bad child, aren't you?" he said.

"Certainly not."

"Well, not bad, but--er--naughty. Now see here, Bab, I'm fond of you,

and you're growing into a mightey pretty girl. But your whole Social

Life is at stake. For heaven's sake, at least until you're married, cut

out the cigarettes and booze."