Page:Love Insurance - Earl Biggers (1914).djvu/162

Rh, gazing with rapt British seriousness at the humorous film that was being flashed on the screen.

Between pictures Harrowby offered an opinion.

"You in America are a jolly lot," he said. "Just fancy our best people in England attending a cinematograph exhibition."

They tried to fancy it, but with his lordship there, they couldn't. Two more pictures ran their filmy lengths, while Mr. Minot sat entranced there in the half dark. It was not the pictures that entranced him. Rather, was it a lady's nearness, the flash of her smile, the hundred and one tones of her voice—all, all again as it had been in that ridiculous automobile—just before the awakening.

After the third picture the lights of the auditorium were turned up, and the hour of vaudeville arrived. On to the stage strolled a pert confident youth garbed in shabby grandeur, who attempted sidewalk repartee. He clipped his jests from barber-shop periodicals, bought his songs from an ex-barroom song writer, and