the moving picture actress;
but she had fallen into a doze and they could not bid her good-bye.

"But I'm going to run down in the morning to see how she is," Tom
announced. "I'll see her before she goes away. She's a plucky one, all
right!"

"Humph!" thought Ruth, when the automobile had gone, "Tom seems to have
been wonderfully taken with that Miss Gray's appearance."

When Jabez Potter came in from the mill and found the strange girl in the
best bed he was inclined to criticize. He was a tall, dusty, old man, for
whom it seemed a hard task ever to speak pleasantly. Aunt Alvirah, when
she was much put out with him, said he "croaked like a raven!"

"Gals, gals, gals!" he grumbled. "This house seems to be nigh full of 'em
when you air to home, Niece Ruth."

"And empty enough of young life, for a fac', when my pretty is away," put
in Aunt Alvirah.

Ruth, not minding her Uncle Jabez's strictures, went about setting the
supper table with puckered lips, whistling softly. This last was an
accomplishment she had picked up from Tom long ago.

"And whistling gals is the wust of all!" snarled Jabez Potter, from the
sink, where he had just taken his face out of the soapsuds bath he always
gave it before sitting down to table. "I reckon ye ain't forgot what I
told ye:

"'Whistlin' gals an' crowin' hens
Always come to some bad ends!'"

"Now, Jabez!" remonstrated Aunt Alvirah.

But Ruth only laughed. "You've got it wrong, Uncle Jabez," she declared.
"There is another version of that old doggerel. It is:

"'Whistling girls and blatting sheep
Are the two best things a farmer can keep!'"

Then she went straight to him and, as his irritated face came out of the
huck towel, she put both arms around his neck and kissed him on his
grizzled cheek.

This sort of treatment always closed her Uncle Jabez's lips for a time.
There seemed no answer to be made to such an argument--and Ruth _did_ love
the crusty old man and was grateful to him.

When the miller had retired

Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures

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