Page:Wilson - Merton of the Movies (1922).djvu/173

 with something of the old confident swagger. Once he doubtfully fingered the sprouting beard, but resolutely dismissed a half-formed notion of finding out how the Holden lot barber would regard a proposition from a new patron to open a charge account. If nothing worse than remaining unshaven was going to happen to him, what cared he? The collar was still pretty good. Why let his beard be an incubus? He forgot it presently in noticing that the people arriving on the Holden lot all looked so extremely well fed. He thought it singular that he should never before have noticed how many well-fed people one saw in a day.

Late in the afternoon his explorations took him beyond the lower end of his little home street, and he was attracted by sounds of the picture drama from a rude board structure labelled the High Gear Dance Hall. He approached and entered with that calm ease of manner which his days on the lot had brought to a perfect bloom. No one now would ever suppose that he was a mere sightseer or chained to the Holden lot by circumstances over which he had ceased to exert the slightest control.

The interior of the High Gear Dance Hall presented nothing new to his seasoned eye. It was the dance-hall made familiar by many a smashing five-reel Western. The picture was, quite normally, waiting. Electricians were shoving about the big light standards, cameras were being moved, and bored actors were loafing informally at the round tables or chatting in groups about the set.

One actor alone was keeping in his part. A ragged, bearded, unkempt elderly man in red shirt and frayed overalls, a repellent felt hat pulled low over his brow, reclined on the floor at the end of the bar, his back against a barrel. Apparently he slept. A flash of remembrance from the Montague girl's talk identified this wretched creature. This was what happened to an actor who had to peddle the brush. Perhaps for days he had been compelled to sleep there in the interests of dance-hall atmosphere.

He again scanned the group, for he remembered, too, that