The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms Part 11

Her cheeks were the color of bridesmaid roses, and Russ, as he looked at her, wished--

But there--What's the use of being mean and telling on a good chap?

The pictures taken, they strolled on. At Fort Marion, on the banks of the Mantanzas River, they found much of interest; but agreed to explore it more in detail at another time.

"You'll have to be filmed here, anyhow," Russ told the girls. "There's an important drama, with several scenes, laid here."

"Are we in it?" asked Ruth.

"Yes, the whole company; and Mr. Pertell said he'd have to hire some supers, too."

By this Russ meant that the manager would have to engage extra persons to impersonate the unimportant characters in the play, as is often done in "mob" scenes in the theaters.

"Now for the orange grove, and then--the Fountain of Youth!" cried Paul, as they came out of the old fort.

"What a delightful combination!" exclaimed Alice.

"Youth--and--orange blossoms!" and she clapped her hands, her eyes shining.

"Be careful," warned Ruth in a low voice, as the young men went on ahead.

"Why, sister of mine?"

"Don't talk so much of orange blossoms."

"Pooh! I'm not thinking of getting married!"

"Oh, Alice!"

"Well, wasn't that what you meant?"

"Not at all, I only meant--"

"I don't believe you knew what you did mean. Come on, we'll be lost!" and she caught Ruth by the arm and hurried on after Russ and Paul.

CHAPTER IX

IN THE DUNGEON

"Oh, if we could only stay here forever!"

"It would be Paradise!"

Thus Ruth and Alice exclaimed as they entered the orange grove, a short distance from the city gates. And indeed the scene that greeted them, and the sweet odors, might well call for this praise and desire from even the most _blase_ tourist.

Even Russ, grown accustomed by his calling to odd scenes, was impressed by the wonderful sight, and as for Paul, who had something of the romantic nature of Ruth, it was a pure delight to him.

"I wonder if they will take any pictures here?" said Ruth, softly--at first it seemed as if one must talk in whispers so as not to disturb the beauty of the place.

"Oh, I'm going to film you here," announced Russ. "Stand still a moment and I'll snap you now. There's a pretty place."

Ruth and Alice a.s.sumed graceful poses, and soon their likenesses were registered on the film. Russ never tired of taking pictures, and when he was not making moving ones he was using his small hand camera. How many times he had taken the likeness of Ruth it would be hard to estimate.

They wandered about the orange grove, and the young men bought some of the delicious fruit, right from the trees, and fully ripe. It had a flavor all its own.

"Let me show you how to eat an orange," suggested one of the men of the grove, as he saw the young people going about, "in the way it is usually done when no orange spoons are to be had."

"Somebody has said," went on the man, "that you need to lean over a bathtub to eat an orange this way, but it's worth while. You get a little smeared up doing it; but you can wash in the spring over there," and he pointed to one amid a pile of stones.

Then with his keen knife he cut the orange in a peculiar spiral manner, with the skin left on so that eventually he had a long yellow strip, with the sections of orange clinging to the yellow rind.

"Now, all you've got to do is to run your mouth along that strip," he directed, "and you get all the juice--that is, all you don't miss. It takes a little practice; but I've got some black boys that can get every drop. Watch!"

Rapidly he ate along the extended strip of skin, to which clung the cut sections of orange. In a moment it was clean.

"It's an awfully crude way of doing it--but, as long as we're in an orange grove, let's do as the orange 'grovers' do," laughed Alice.

"I'm game!" cried Paul.

"Same here!" put in Russ, and they cut their oranges as the man had done.

The latter then prepared one each for Ruth and Alice, and amid much laughter--the girls and the young men leaning far over so as not to drip the juice on their clothes--they finished the delicious fruit.

"Now bring on your bathtub!" cried Russ.

"There's the spring," the man said. "There's a basin near it, and it's clean."

Laughing over the new way of eating oranges, but voting that it was worth while, even if it was a bit "smeary," the young folks washed their hands and faces, and kept on through the grove, growing more and more glad at every step that they had come to Florida.

"And now for the Fountain of Youth!" cried Paul.

"I don't feel that I need it, after that delicious orange," laughed Ruth.

"Indeed, if you get any younger, you'll go back to kindergarten days,"

remarked Paul.

"Thank you. I don't want to be quite as young as that."

The Fountain of Youth, one of the curiosities of St. Augustine, is on Myrtle avenue, two blocks north of the orange grove, and the four laughing young people were soon there.

"Is this really the fountain Ponce de Leon thought would give eternal youth?" asked Ruth, half-seriously, as they stood near the little roofed-over spring.

"That is the legend," declared Paul. "Of course that's not saying it's so. But the spring has one peculiar quality."

"What's that?" asked Russ.