“Not by adding my poor little twenty-five dollars to it.  We want hundreds—­thousands!  Don’t you understand, Helen, that my check would only be a drop in the bucket?  And, anyway, I would come near to starving before I would use this check.”

“We—­ell!  I don’t know that I blame you,” sighed her friend.  “I’d be as pleased as Punch if it were mine.  Just think of your writing a real moving picture!” she repeated.  “Won’t the girls be surprised?  And suppose it comes to Lumberton and we can all go and see it?  You will be famous, Ruth.”

“I don’t know about that, dear,” Ruth returned happily.  “There is something about it all that you don’t see yet.”

“What’s that?”

“This success of mine, I tell you, has given me a great, big idea.”

“About what?”

“For the dormitory fund,” Ruth said.  “Mercy is right.  Great oaks do grow from little acorns.”

“Who’s denying it?” demanded Helen.  “Go on.”

“Out of this little idea of mine which I have sold to Mr. Hammond, comes a thought, dear,” said Ruth, solemnly, “that may get us all the money we need to rebuild the West Dormitory.”

“I—­don’t—­just—­see——­”

“But you will,” cried Ruth.  “Let me explain.  If I can write a one-reel picture play, why not a long one—­a real play—­a five-reel drama?  I have just the idea for it—­oh, a grand idea!”

“Oh, Ruth!” murmured Helen, clasping her hands.

“I will write the play, we will all act in it, and Mr. Hammond shall produce it.  It can be shown around in every city and town from which we girls come—­our home towns, you know.  Folks will want to see us Briarwood girls acting for the movies—­won’t they?”

“I should say they would!  Fancy our doing that?”

“We can do it.  Of course we can!  And we’ll get a royalty from the film and that will all go into the dormitory fund,” went on the enthusiastic Ruth.

“Oh, my dear!” gasped Helen.  “Would Mr. Hammond take such a play if you wrote it?”

“Of course I don’t know.  If not he, then some other producer.  I know I have a novel idea,” asserted Ruth.

“What is it?” asked the curious Helen.

“A schoolgirl picture, just as I say.  Of course, there will have to be some real actors in it; we girls couldn’t be funny enough, or serious enough, perhaps, to take the most important parts.  We could act out some real scenes of boarding school life, just the same.”

“I should say we could!” cried Helen.  “Who better?  Stage one of our old midnight sprees, and show Heavy gobbling everything in sight.  That would make ’em laugh.”

“But we want more than a comedy,” Ruth said seriously.  “I have the germ of an idea in my mind.  I’ll write Mr. Hammond about it first of all.  And we must have Miss Gray in it.”

“He says here,” said Helen, glancing through the moving picture man’s letter again, “that he wants you to try another.  Oh! and he says that in a few days he is coming to Lumberton with a company to take some films.”