Tish Plays the Game by Mary Roberts Rinehart Read Free Book Online

was called out, however, Aggie leaned over to me.
    “Stove, nothing!” she said. “She’s painted her face! And she’s got a new transformation!” Had Charlie Sands himself appeared wearing a toupee we could not have been more astounded. And our amazement continued when Hannah brought in a tea tray with the Carberry silver on it, silver which had been in a safe-deposit vault for twenty years.
    “Hannah,” I demanded, “what is the matter?”
    “She’s going to be married! That’s what,” said Hannah, putting down the tray with a slam. “No fool like an old fool!” Then she burst into tears. “She spent the whole morning in a beauty parlor,” she wailed. “Look at her finger nails! And callin’ me in to draw up her corset on her!” Neither Aggie nor I could speak for a moment. As I have said, our dear Tish had never shown any interest in the other sex. Indeed, I think I may say that Tish’s virginity of outlook regarding herself is her strongest characteristic. It is her proud boast that no man has ever offered her the most chaste of salutes, and her simple statement as to what would happen if one did has always been a model of firmness.
    I have heard her remark that when the late Henry Clay observed “Give me liberty or give me death,” he was referring to marriage.
    But Aggie had been correct. There was a bloom on dear Tish’s face never placed there by the benign hand of Nature. Had I seen Mr. Ostermaier, our minister, preaching a sermon in a silk hat I should not have felt more horrified. And our anxiety was not lessened by Tish’s first remark when she returned.
    “I shall want you two as witnesses,” she said. “And I shall make just one remark now. I know your attitude on certain subjects, so I ask you simply to remember this: I believe we owe a duty to the nation, especially with regard to children.”
    “Good heavens, Tish!” Aggie said, and turned a sort of greenish white. “A woman of your age—”
    “What’s my age got to do with it?” Tish snapped. “I simply say—”
    But just then the doorbell rang, and Hannah announced a gentleman.
    It was a Mr. Stein.
    Aggie has told me since that the thought of Tish marrying was as nothing to her then, compared with the belief that she was marrying out of the Presbyterian Church. And she knew the moment she saw him that Mr. Stein was not a Presbyterian. But as it developed and as all the world knows now, it was not a matter of marriage at all.
    Mr. Stein was the well-known moving-picture producer.
    While Aggie and I were endeavoring to readjust our ideas he sat down, and looked at Tish while rubbing his hands together.
    “Well, Miss Carberry,” he said, “I’ve brought the contracts.”
    “And the advance?” Tish inquired calmly.
    “And the advance. Certified check, as you requested.”
    “You approve of my idea?”
    “Well,” he said, “you’re right in one way. Sex has been overdone in pictures. The censors have killed it. When you’re limited to a five-foot kiss—well, you know. You can’t get it over, that’s all. We’ve had to fall back on adventure. Not even crime, at that. Would you believe it, we’ve had to change a murder scene just lately to the corpse taking an overdose of sleeping medicine by mistake. And we can’t have a woman show her figure on a chaise longue in a tea gown, while the bathing-suit people get by without any trouble. It’s criminal, that’s all. Criminal!”
    “You have missed my idea,” Tish said coldly. “I wrote that picture to prove that a love interest, any love interest, is not essential to a picture.”
    He agreed with what we now realize was suspicious alacrity.
    “Certainly,” he said. “Certainly! After all, who pays the profits on pictures? The women, Miss Carberry. The women! Do up the dishes in a hurry—get me?—and beat it for the theater. Like to sit there and imagine themselves the heroine. And up to now we’ve never given them a heroine over seventeen years of