Gerard Bolton was speaking at the moment.
“She’s clever, all right,” he admitted. “You can see that. But I doubt if she has the ability to handle a picture like ‘The Girl of Gold.’”
“She can do it if any one can,” said Layton Boardman. “Look at the work she did in ‘Snow-blind’ and this last picture at Golden Pass.”
“She is one of those rare people,” Edith Lang spoke up, also in Ruth’s support, “who have the imagination and ability not only to write the script of her plays but to direct the filming as well.”
“She did not write the script for ‘The Girl of Gold,’” Bolton pointed out.
“No, but I believe she thoroughly understands it,” Edith Lang flashed back at him.
“That,” retorted the director, with a cynical lifting of eyebrows, “remains to be seen!”
“I don’t like working under the direction of a woman, never did!” It was the growling tones of Joe Rumph that broke into the conversation. “I don’t know what the boss was thinking of to put a kid like that over us! It’s my belief that this whole thing’s going to be a complete flop!”
There was a deep and significant silence while the others looked at him. The dwarf was not popular with his fellow actors. For, where his terrible deformity might have excited pity, his rough manner and bitter words rejected it. But at this moment, despite the loyal defense of the two actors who had worked with Ruth in her last picture, the consensus of opinion was with Joe Rumph.
From all appearances, Ruth Fielding’s road to success on this occasion was to be by no means an easy one!