"Listen to that!" Alice said to her sister. "Don't your ears burn?"
"Indeed they do. Oh! isn't it queer to see yourself, and hear yourself criticised?"
"Wasn't that fine?" demanded the unseen critic behind the sisters, as Ruth did an effective bit of acting. "Oh, I know I'm just going to love her. I hope she is in lots of films."
"So do I," added her companion. "But I like the small one best--the one that was in the scene before this."
"That's you, Alice," whispered Ruth. "Now it's your turn for your ears to burn."
"I thought you'd like this," commented Russ. "This film is a hit, all right."
And so it seemed, for the audience applauded when the little photo play was over, and that is a pretty good test.
"I think they were perfectly splendid," said another voice off to the left.
"Who, those two girls in that play?" some one asked.
"Yes. They're new ones, too. I haven't seen them in any of the Comet's other plays."
"Yes, I guess they must be new," and this was a girl's voice back in the darkness of the theater. "Oh, I'd like to meet them! I wish I could act for the movies!"
"She doesn't know how near she is to meeting us!" whispered Alice to her sister, as the next film was flashed on the white screen. "Did you ever have an experience like this before?"
"Splendid! I never expected to see myself like that."
"Neither did I. Russ, how did you come to think of it?"
"Oh, it just came to me," he answered, chuckling.
The two "moving picture girls," as they laughingly called themselves, with Russ, were on their way home from the little theater where they had just witnessed the depiction of themselves on the screen. They had listened with amusement, not unmixed with pride, at the whispered comments on the play in which they had taken part.
"Do you think--I mean--would you call that a successful film, Russ?" asked Alice.
"I certainly would," he replied. "Didn't I take it myself?"
"That's so!" exclaimed Ruth. "But I wish Mr. Pertell could know how well it went. Not on our account," she added quickly, "but on account of his own business, and because dear daddy is in it. And the others, too--they'd be glad to know the audience liked it, I think."
"Don't worry," returned Russ. "Mr. Pertell will know it soon enough. He keeps track of all his films, and he knows which are successful or not. He'll hear of this one the first thing in the morning. The owners of the theaters where our films are used report as to which go the best. And their own re-orders also show that. So you'll be discovered, all right."