Page:Wilson - Merton of the Movies (1922).djvu/317

 They were laughing, as the Montague girl had laughed that first morning, because the resemblance was so striking.

But now on the screen, after the actor's long fond look at himself, came the words, "The Only Man He Ever Loved." Laughter again. The watcher felt himself grow hot. Had Baird been betrayed by one of his staff?

The scene with the letters followed. Clothes baskets of letters. His own work, as he opened a few from the top, was all that he could have wished. He was finely Harold Parmalee, and again the hoarse neighbour whispered, "Ain't he got Parmalee dead, though?"

"Poor, silly little girls!" the screen exclaimed, and the audience became noisy. Undoubtedly it was a tribute to his perfection in the Parmalee manner. But he was glad that now there would come acting at which no one could laugh.

There was the delicatessen shop, the earnest young cashier and his poor old mother who mopped. He saw himself embrace her and murmur words of encouragement, but incredibly there were giggles from the audience, doubtless from base souls who were impervious to pathos. The giggles coalesced to a general laugh when the poor old mother, again mopping on the floor, was seen to say, "I hate these mopping mothers. You get took with house-maid's knee in the first reel."

Again he was seized with a fear that one of Baird's staff had been clumsy with subtitles. His eyes flew to his own serious face when the silly words had gone.

The drama moved. Indeed the action of the shadows was swifter than he supposed it would be. The dissolute son of the proprietor came on to dust the wares and to elicit a laugh when he performed a bit of business that had escaped Merton at the time. Against the wire screen that covered the largest cheese on the counter he placed a placard, "Dangerous. Do not Annoy."

Probably Baird had not known of this clowning. And there came another subtitle that would dismay Baird when the serious young bookkeeper enacted his scene with the