Even Jennie Stone worked harder and took her school tasks more seriously than ever before.

“But, see here!” she said to her mates one day, “here’s some ‘hot ones’ Miss Brokaw has been handing the primes, and I believe they’d puzzle some of us big girls.  Listen!  ‘What is longitude?’ Sue Mellen came to me, puzzled, about that,” chuckled Jennie, “and I told her longitude is those lengthwise stripes on a watermelon.”

“Oh, Heavy!” gasped Lluella.  “How could you?”

“Didn’t hurt me at all,” proclaimed Jennie, calmly.  “And I told her that a ‘ski’ is what a Russian has on the end of his name.  That quite satisfiedski Miss Mellenski, whether it does Miss Brokawski or not!”

Mrs. Tellingham gave the school a serious talk the day before the film company arrived to take the first pictures for Ruth’s play.  She read and explained that part of the scenario in which the Briarwood girls would appear, and begged their serious co-operation with the director who would have the making of the film in charge.

Ruth still shrank from seeing Mr. Grimes again; but she found that, while engaged in the work of making these pictures, he behaved quite differently from the way he had acted the day she had first seen him on the bank of the Lumano river.

He was patient, but insistent.  He knew just what effect he wanted and always got it in the end.  And Ruth and Helen told each other that, ugly as he could be, Mr. Grimes was really a most wonderful director.  They did not wonder that Hazel Gray expressed her desire to work under Mr. Grimes, harsh as he had been to her.

It was difficult for the girls—­even for Ruth who had written the scenario—­to follow the trend of the story of “The Heart of a Schoolgirl” by closely watching the taking of these scenes in and about Briarwood Hall; for they were not taken in proper rotation.

Mr. Grimes had his schedule before him and he skipped from one part of the story’s action to another in a most bewildering way, getting the scenes about the school filmed in each “setting” in succession, rather than following the thread of the story.

Nor could Ruth judge the effect of the several pictures.  She was too close to them.  There was no perspective.

Sometimes when Mr. Grimes seemed the most satisfied, Ruth could see nothing in that scene at all.  Again he would make the participants go over and over a scene that seemed perfectly clear the first time.

Hazel Gray and several other professional performers were at Briarwood and had their parts in the scenes with the schoolgirls.  Hazel played the heroine of Ruth’s drama, but Mr. Hammond had insisted upon Ruth herself acting the part of the heroine’s chum—­a not unimportant role.

Ruth did not feel that she had histrionic ability; but she was so anxious for the moving picture to be a success, that she would have tried her very best to suit Mr. Grimes in any role.  She was surprised, however, when he warmly praised her work in her one scene which was at all emotional.