“I wish,” cried the old woman shrilly, “that I warn’t too old and too crooked, to do something myself for the soldiers. But my back an’ my bones won’t let me, Jabez. And I ain’t got no bank account. All I can do is to pray.”
The miller looked at her with his usual grim smile. Perhaps it was a little quizzical on this occasion.
“Do you calc’late to do any prayin’ about this here filum Ruth is going to make, ‘The Boys of the Draft’?” he asked.
“I sartinly be—for her success and the good it may do.”
“By gum! she’ll make money, then,” declared Uncle Jabez, who had unbounded faith in the religion Aunt Alvirah professed—but he did not.
Ruth, hearing this, developed another of her inspirational ideas. Uncle Jabez fell into a trap she laid for him, after having taken Mr. Hammond into her confidence regarding what she proposed doing.
“I reckon you’ll make a mint of money out’n this draft story,” the miller said one evening, when the actual work on the photographing of the film was well under way.
“I hope so,” admitted Ruth slowly. “But I am afraid some parts of it will have to be cut or changed because it would cost more than Mr. Hammond cares to put into it at this time. You know, the Alectrion Corporation is in the field with several big things, and it takes a lot of money.”
“Why don’t he borry it?” demanded the miller sharply.
“He never does that. The only way in which he accepts outside capital is to let moneyed men buy into a picture he is making, taking their chance along with the rest of us that the picture will be a success.”