and lie down. I suppose
you are maybe worn out. I ought to have thought of that."

"Not a bit of it!" said the game little woman. "I should love to go.
Maybe you won't believe it, but I never went to a movie in my life,
and I've been wanting to know what they were like for a long time."

"Never went to a movie in your life! Why, Cloudy, you poor dear!" said
Allison, who had been fairly fed on movies. "Why, how did it happen?
Don't they have moving pictures in your town?"

"Yes, they have them now, though only a year or so ago. But you know
I've never been able to get away, even if they had been all about me.
Besides, I suppose I should have been considered crazy if I had gone,
me, an oldish woman! If there had been children to take, it would have
been different. I suppose it is a childish desire, but I always loved
pictures."

"Well, we're going," said Allison. "Get in quick, and I'll have you
there before you say Jack Robinson!"

And so in the restful cool of a flower-laden atmosphere in one of the
finest moving-picture places in the city Julia Cloud sat with her two
children and saw her first moving picture, holding her breath in
wonder and delight as the people on the screen lived and moved before
her.

"I'm afraid I'm having too good a time," she said quietly as she
settled back in the car again, and was whirled away to the hotel. "I
feel as if I were a child again. If this keeps on, I won't have
dignity enough left to chaperon you properly."

"Oh, but Cloudy, dear, that's just why we want you, because you know
how to be young and play with us," clamored both of them together.

Then after a good dinner they went up to their rooms, and there was
Julia Cloud's shining new trunk that had to be looked over; and there
on the floor beside it stood two packages, big boxes, both of them.

"This must be a mistake," said Julia Cloud, looking at them curiously.
"Allison, you better call the boy and have him take them away to the
right room."

Allison picked up the top package, a big, square box.

"Why, this is your name, Cloudy Jewel!" he exclaimed. "It must be
yours. Open it!"

"But how could it be?" said Julia Cloud perplexedly.

"Open it, Cloudy. I want to see what's in it."

Julia Cloud was bending over the long pasteboard box on the floor and
finding her name on that, too.

"It's very strange," she said, her cheeks beginning to grow pink like
those of a child on her first Christmas morning. "I suppose