It was an exciting introduction for me to what they call the silent drama.
Then I looked at Vida and she was crying her eyes out. I guessed it was from sympathy with the mother actress, but the grouch also stares at her with his gimlet eyes and says:
"Here, don't you waste any tears on her. That's all in the day's work."
"I—wasn't thinking of her," sobs Vida.
"Then what you crying for?" says he.
"For that poor dear boy that's being dragged from his mother to prison for some childish prank," she blubbers.
Me, I laughed right out at the little fool, but the director didn't laugh.
"Well, I'll be damned!" says he in low, reverent tones.
Then he begins to look into her face like he'd lost something there. Then he backed off and looked into it a minute more. Then he went crazy all over the place.
"Here," he barks at another actress, "get this woman into your dressing room and get the number five on her quick. Make her up for this part, understand? You there, Eddie, run get that calico skirt and black-satin waist off Miss St. Clair and hustle 'em over to Miss Harcourt's room, where this lady will be making up. Come on now! Move! Work quick! We can't be on this scene all day."