Page:Wilson - Merton of the Movies (1922).djvu/273

 tinguished looking old gentleman, probably a banker and a power in Wall Street, who read his morning papers. Timidly he stood before this person, thrusting forward his basket. The old gentleman glanced up in annoyance and brutally rebuffed the country boy with an angry flourish of the paper he read.

"You're hurt by this treatment," called Baird, "and almost discouraged. You look back over your shoulder to where sister is doing a good business with her stuff, and you see the old mother back in her kitchen, working her fingers to the bone—we'll have a flash of that, see?—and you try again. Take out that bottle in the corner of the basket, uncork it, and try again. The old man looks up—he's smelled something. You hold the bottle toward him and you're saying so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so, 'Oh, Mister, if you knew how hard my poor old mother works to make this stuff! Won't you please take a little taste of her improved grape juice and see if you don't want to buy a few shillings' worth'—so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so—see what I mean? That's it, look pleading. Think how the little home depends on it."

The old gentleman, first so rude, consented to taste the improved grape juice. He put the bottle to his lips and tilted it. A camera was brought up to record closely the look of pleased astonishment that enlivened his face. He arose to his feet, tilted the bottle again, this time drinking abundantly. He smacked his lips with relish, glanced furtively at the group of women in the background, caught the country boy by a sleeve and drew him farther along the porch.

"He's telling you what fine stuff this grape juice is," explained Baird; "saying that your mother must be a wonderful old lady, and he'll drop over to meet her; and in the meantime he wants you to bring him all this grape juice she has. He'll take it; she can name her own price. He hands you a ten dollar bill for the bottle he has and for another in the basket that's it, give it to him. The rest of the bottles are jams or something. You want him to take them, but