“Hello! Mr. Baird, please. Is this Mr. Baird? Well, Jeff, everything’s jake. Yeah. The poor thing was pretty wild when he got here. First he began to bluff. He’d got an earful from someone, probably over on the lot. And he put it over on me for a minute, too. But he didn’t last good. He was awful broke up when the end came. Bless his heart. But you bet I kissed the hurt place and made it well. How about him now? Jeff, I’m darned if I can tell except he’s right again. When he got here he was some heart-broke and some mad and some set up on account of things he hears about himself. I guess he’s that way still, except I mended the heart-break. I can’t quite make him out—he’s like a book where you can’t guess what’s coming in the next chapter, so you keep on reading. I can see we ain’t ever going to talk much about it—not if we live together twenty years. What’s that? Yeah. Didn’t I tell you he was always getting me, somehow? Well, now I’m got. Yeah. We’re gonna do an altar walk. What? Oh, right away. Say, honest, Jeff, I’ll never have an easy minute again while he’s out of my sight. Helpless! You said it. Thanks, Jeff. I know that, old man. Good-by!”
CHAPTER XX. ONWARD AND UPWARD
At the first showing of the Buckeye company’s new five-reel comedy—Five Reels-500 Laughs—entitled Brewing Trouble, two important members of its cast occupied balcony seats and one of them throughout the piece brazenly applauded the screen art of her husband. “I don’t care who sees me,” she would reply ever and again to his whispered protests.
The new piece proved to be a rather broadly stressed burlesque of the type of picture drama that has done so much to endear the personality of Edgar Wayne to his public. It was accorded a hearty reception. There was nothing to which it might be compared save the company’s previous Hearts on Fire, and it seemed to be felt that the present offering had surpassed even that masterpiece of satire.
The Gills, above referred to, watched the unwinding celluloid with vastly different emotions. Mrs. Gill was hearty in her enjoyment, as has been indicated. Her husband, superficially, was not displeased. But beneath that surface of calm approval—beneath even the look of bored indifference he now and then managed—there still ran a complication of emotions, not the least of which was honest bewilderment. People laughed, so it must be funny. And it was good to be known as an artist of worth, even if the effects of your art were unintended.
It was no shock to him to learn now that the mechanical appliance in his screen-mother’s kitchen was a still, and that the grape juice the honest country boy purveyed to the rich New Yorker had been improved in rank defiance of a constitutional amendment. And even during the filming of the piece he had suspected that the little sister, so engagingly played by the present Mrs. Gill, was being too bold. With slight surprise, therefore, as the drama unfolded, he saw that she had in the most brazen manner invited the attentions of the city villains.
She had, in truth, been only too eager to be lured to the great city with all its pitfalls, and had bidden the old home farewell in her simple country way while each of the villains in turn had awaited her in his motor-car. What Merton had not been privileged to watch were the later developments of this villainy. For just beyond the little hamlet at a lonely spot in the road each of the motor-cars had been stopped by a cross-eyed gentleman looking much like the clerk in the hotel, save that he was profusely bewhiskered and bore side-arms in a menacing fashion.
Declaring that no scoundrel could take his little daughter from him, he deprived the villains of their valuables, so that for a time at least they should not bring other unsuspecting girls to grief. As a further precaution he compelled them to abandon their motor-cars, in which he drove off with the rescued daughter. He was later seen to sell the cars at a wayside garage, and, after dividing their spoils with his daughter, to hail a suburban trolley upon which they both returned to the home nest, where the little girl would again languish at the gate, a prey to any designing city man who might pass.
She seemed so defenceless in her wild-rose beauty, her longing for pretty clothes and city ways, and yet so capably pro by this opportune father who appeared to foresee the moment of her flights.