This argument staggered the girls for a moment.  Then Beth asked:  “How do the ordinary theatres manage?”

“The ordinary theatre simply rents its pictures, paying about three hundred dollars a week for the service.  There is a ‘middleman,’ called the ‘Exchange,’ whose business is to buy the films from the makers and rent them to the theatres.  He pays a big price for a film, but is able to rent it to dozens of theatres, by turns, and by this method he not only gets back the money he has expended but makes a liberal profit.”

“Well,” said Patsy, not to be baffled, “we could sell several copies of our films to these middlemen, and so reduce the expense of making them for our use.”

“The middleman won’t buy them,” asserted Jones.  “He is the thrall of one or the other of the trusts, and buys only trust pictures.”

“I see,” said Uncle John, catching the idea; “it’s a scheme to destroy competition.”

“Exactly,” replied young Jones.

“What does the Continental do, Maud?” asked Patsy.

“I don’t know,” answered the girl; “but perhaps Aunt Jane can tell you.”

“I believe the Continental is a sort of trust within itself,” explained Mrs. Montrose.  “Since we have been connected with the company I have learned more or less of its methods.  It employs a dozen or so producing companies and makes three or four pictures every week.  The concern has its own Exchange, or middleman, who rents only Continental films to the theatres that patronize him.”

“Well, we might do the same thing,” proposed Patsy, who was loath to abandon her plan.

“You might, if you have the capital,” assented Mrs. Montrose.  “The Continental is an immense corporation, and I am told it has more than a million dollars invested.”

“Two millions,” said A. Jones.

The girls were silent a while, seriously considering this startling assertion.  They had, between them, considerable money, but they realized they could not enter a field that required such an enormous investment as film making.

“I suppose,” said Beth regretfully, “we shall have to give up making films.”

“Then where are we to get the proper pictures for our theatre?” demanded Patsy.

“It is quite evident we can’t get them,” said Louise.  “Therefore we may be obliged to abandon the theatre proposition.”

Another silence, still more grave.  Uncle John was discreet enough to say nothing.  The Stantons and Mrs. Montrose felt it was not their affair.  Arthur Weldon was slyly enjoying the chagrin visible upon the faces of Mr. Merrick’s three pretty nieces.

As for A. Jones, he was industriously figuring upon the back of an envelope with a stubby bit of pencil.

CHAPTER XIII

A FOOLISH BOY

It was the youthful Sangoan who first broke the silence.  Glancing at the figures he had made he said: