"Very well, Mr. Bunn, if you resign now, without the two weeks' notice called for in your contract, you need not expect another engagement with me, nor with any of the moving picture associations with which I am connected. I am not asking you to do anything very difficult."
"But to ride a mule! Great Scott! I can't do that, my dear sir!"
"You told me you could ride."
"Yes, a horse, perhaps; but not a mule. Why, a mule kicks!"
"Oh, I don't believe this one will kick," replied the manager. "Anyhow, I want you to ride him. There is to be a comic part to this play, and I look to you to provide it. You will blacken your face and——"
"Black up and take the part of a colored man—me, Wellington Bunn—who has played the classic Shakespeare—do blackface? Never!"
"You forget that Shakespeare's Othello was a colored man, I guess," laughed Mr. Pertell, "and you told me you had played that character."
"So I have, but Othello was a Moor—not a common black-faced comedian. He was brown, rather than black."
"Well, we'll go a few shades darker, and be real black, in your case," suggested Mr. Pertell. "And you'll have to ride the mule. It is necessary to make the scene a success."
Wellington Bunn sighed, as he answered: