“’Knock, knock, knock! the girls are knocking——­Bring the
    hammers all this way!’”

“Never mind, Ruthie Fielding,” complained Lluella.  “We don’t all of us have the luck you do.  All your English made up for you in that scenario——­”

“And who is this made up, I’d be glad to have somebody tell me?” interposed Jennie.  “Oh, girls! tell me.  Do you all see the same thing I do?”

The crowd were strolling slowly down the Cedar Walk and the individual the plump girl had spied had just come into view, walking toward them.  He was a tall, lean man, “as narrow as a happy thought,” Jennie muttered, and dressed in a peculiar manner.

Few visitors came to Briarwood save parents or friends of the girls.  This man did not even look like a pedler.  At least, he carried no sample case, and he was not walking from the direction of Lumberton.

His black suit was very dusty and his yellow shoes proved by the dust they bore, too, that he had walked a long way.

“He wears a rolling collar and a flowing tie,” muttered the irrepressible Jennie.  “Goodness! it almost makes me seasick to look at them. What can he be?  A chaplain in the navy?  An actor?”

“Actor is right,” thought Ruth, as the man strutted up the walk.

The girls, who were attending Ruth and Ann and Amy Gregg a part of the way to Mrs. Sadoc Smith’s, gave the strange man plenty of room on the gravel walk, but when he came near them he stopped and stared.  And he stared at Ruth.

“Pardon me, young lady,” he said, in a full, sonorous tone.  “Are you Miss Fielding?”

The other girls drifted away and left Ruth to face the odd looking person.

“I am Ruth Fielding,” Ruth said, much puzzled.

“Ah! you do not know me?” queried the man.

“No, sir.”

“My card!” said the man, with a flourish.

Jennie whispered to the others:  “Look at him!  He draws and presents that card as though it were a sword at his enemy’s throat!  I hope he won’t impale her upon it.”

Ruth, much bewildered, and not a little troubled, accepted the card.  On it was printed: 

    AMASA FARRINGTON
    Criterion Films

“Goodness!” thought Ruth.  “More moving picture people?”

“I had the happiness,” stated Mr. Farrington, “of being present when the censors saw the first run of your eminently successful picture, ’The Heart of a Schoolgirl,’ Miss Fielding, and through a mutual friend I learned where you were to be found.  I may say that from your appearance on the screen I was enabled to recognize you just now.”

Ruth said nothing, but waited for him to explain.  There really did not seem to be anything she could say.

“I see in that film, Miss Fielding,” pursued Mr. Farrington, “the promise of better work—­in time, of course, in time.  You are young yet.  I believe you attend this boarding school?”