terest in the proposed scenario-writing contest than she
had at first intended.

She could not imagine how anybody could take her work and change it so
that she would not recognize it! The plot of the story was too well
wrought and the working out of it too direct.

She did not think that she had it perfect. Only that she had perfected the
idea as well as she was able. But changing it would not hide from her the
recognition of her own brain-child.

So after breakfast she went to Mr. Hammond to make inquiry about the
scenario contest.

"Ha, ha! So you are coming to yourself, Miss Ruth!" he chuckled. "I told
you you would feel different. I only wish _you_ would get a real smart
idea for a picture."

"Nothing like that!" she told him, shaking her head. "I could not think of
writing a new scenario. You don't know what it means to me--the loss of
that picture I had struggled so long with and thought so much about. I----

"But let us not talk of it," she hastened to add. "I am curious regarding
the stories that have been offered to you."

"You need not fear competition," he replied. "Just as I told you, all
these perfectly good acting people base their scenarios on dramas they
have played or seen played. They haven't got the idea of writing for the
screen at all, although they work before the camera."

"And that is no wonder!" exclaimed Ruth. "The way the directors take
scenes, the actors never get much of an idea of the continuity of the
story they are making. But these stories?"

"So far, I haven't found a possible scenario. And I have looked at more
than a score."

"You don't mean it!"

"I most certainly do," he assured her. "Want to look at them?"

"Why--yes," confessed Ruth. "I am curious, as I tell you."

"Go to it!" exclaimed Mr. Hammond, opening a drawer of his desk and
pointing to the pile of manuscripts within. "Consider yourself at home
here. I am going over to the port with Director Hooley and most of the
members of the company. We have found just the location for the shooting
of that scene in your 'Seaside Idyl' where the ladies' aid society holds
its 'gossip session' in the grove--remember?"

"Oh, yes," Ruth replied, not much interested, as she took the first
scenario out of the drawer.

"And Hooley's found some splendid types, too, around the village. They
really have a sewing circle connected with the Herringport Union Church,
and I have agreed to help the ladies pay for having the church edi