Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper: A Story of Cape CodCooper, James A.
General
Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper: A Story of Cape Cod
Cooper, James A.
Cape Cod (Mass.) -- Fiction
"Almost over. But I'll run an' tell the cook to dish you up something
hot. Come right this way an' wash. I'll fix you a table where it's
cool. This is 'bout the first hot day we've had."
She showed the visitor into the dressing-room and then bustled away.
Later she hovered about the table where Louise ate, the other boarders
having departed.
"My name's Gusty Durgin," she volunteered. "I reckon you're one o' them
movin' picture actresses they say are goin' to work down to The Beaches
this summer."
"What makes you think so?" asked Louise, somewhat amused.
"Why--you kinder look it. I should say you had 'screen charm.' Oh! I
been readin' up about you folks for a long time back. I subscribed to
_The Fillum Universe_ that tells all about you. I'd like to try actin'
before the cam'ra myself. But I cal'late I ain't got much 'screen
charm,'" the waitress added seriously. "I'm too fat. And I wouldn't do
none of them comedy pictures where the fat woman always gets the worst of
it. But you must take lovely photographs."
"I'm not sure that I do," laughed Louise.
"Land sakes! Course you do. Them big eyes o' yourn must just look
fetchin' in a picture. I don't believe I've ever seen you in a movie,
have I, Miss------?"
"Grayling."
"'Grayling'! Ain't that pretty?" Gusty Durgin gave an envious sigh. "Is
it your honest to goodness, or just your fillum name?"
"My 'honest to goodness,'" the visitor confessed, bubbling with laughter.
"Land sakes! I should have to change mine all right. The kids at school
useter call me 'Dusty Gudgeon.' Course, my right name's Augusta; but
nobody ever remembers down here on the Cape to call anybody by such a
long name. Useter be a boy in our school who was named 'Christopher
Columbus George Washington Marquis de Lafayette Gallup.' His mother
named him that. But everybody called him 'Lafe'--after Lafayette, ye see.
"Land sakes! I should just have to change my name if I acted in the
pictures. Your complexion's real, too, ain't it?" pursued this waitress
with histrionic ambitions. "Real pretty, too, if 'tis high colored. I
expect you have to make up for the pictures, just the same."
"I suppose I should. I believe it is always necessary to accentuate the
lights and shadows for the camera."
"'Accentuate'--yep. That's a good word. I'll remember that," said
Gusty. "You goin' to stay down to The Beaches long---and will you like
it?"
"The Beaches?"
"That's where you'll work. At the Bozewell house. Swell bungalow. All
the big bugs live along The Beaches."
"I am not sure just how long I shall stay," confessed Louise Grayling;
"but I know I am going to like it."
CHAPTER II
CAP'N ABE
"I see by the _Globe_ paper," Cap'n Abe observed, pushing up from his
bewhiskered visage the silver-bowed spectacles he really did not need,
"that them fellers saved from the wreck of the _Gilbert Gaunt_ cal'late
they went through something of an adventure."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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