Part 24 (1/2)
”I don't know what to do. Where'll we go if we don't go back?” She thought a moment. ”I'll ask Joseph; he always knows everything.” She turned to the waiting chauffeur. ”Joseph, we don't want to go home.
Ain't there anything we can see?”
Joseph looked at the five old ladies, evidently at a loss as to what would please them; then a suggestion occurred to him.
”You might go to a moving-picture show.”
”What's that?”
”It's--it's a kind of theater.”
”Well, I ain't never seen one,” said Drusilla; and turned to the old ladies, who were waiting patiently to learn of their final disposal.
”Do you want to go to a movin'-picture show?”
”What's that?” came in chorus.
”I don't know myself, but it's a sort of--sort of--”
”Never mind what it is, we want to go.”
”Yes, let's go, Drusilla; let's not go home.”
And the patrons of the moving-picture house had a view of six old ladies, piloted by a smartly dressed chauffeur, who saw them seated in a box and then left them. It was really a very good moving-picture, and if the actors could have seen the delight of the box party they would have felt they had not toiled in vain. They sat for two hours entranced by the scenes that pa.s.sed before them on the screen. One of the plays was a war-time drama, and the old ladies were quite likely the only ones in the house to whom the blue and the gray brought memories.
At the end of the reel, Drusilla decided that they should be leaving, as supper would be ready at the home. One of the old ladies objected.
”Let's not go home, Drusilla; let's miss supper.”
”It's bean night, anyway,” said another. ”Let's stay.”
Five pairs of dim old eyes looked at Drusilla beseechingly.
”Well, we'll stay just a little while longer,” she concluded.
The little while quite likely would have been the rest of the evening if the performance had not finished for the afternoon. They rose with a sigh and left the theater. When they started to help Grandma Perkins into the car, she stopped with one foot on the step.
”Drusilla, I want to ride with the man,” she said.
”Oh, but, Grandma, you'd catch cold,” Drusilla objected.
”I wouldn't,” she wailed, ”and I want to. I might jest as well die fer a sheep as a lamb, and I won't never git no chance again to feel myself goin' through the air with nothin' in front of me.”
”But, Grandma--”
The old lip quivered, and the eyes filled childishly.
”But I want to, Drusilla. I don't want to be all squshed up with a lot of old women where I can't see nothin'. I want to see, and I want to _feel.”_
Drusilla turned helplessly to the other women, and then Joseph came to her aid.