“Your little friend is a find,” he says.  “Mark my words, Mrs. Pettijohn, she’s got a future or I don’t know faces.  She’ll screen well, and she’s one of the few that can turn on the tears when she wants to.  I always did hate glycerine in this art.  Now if only I can get her camera wise—­and I’ll bet I can!  Lucky we’d just started on this piece when St. Clair blew up.  Only one little retake, where she’s happy over her boy’s promotion in the factory.  She’s bound to get away with that; then if she can get the water again for this scene it will be all over but signing her contract.”

I was some excited myself by this time, you’d better believe.  Nervous as a cat I found myself when Vida was led out in the sad mother’s costume by this other actress that had made her up.  But Vida wasn’t nervous the least bit.  She was gayly babbling that she’d always wanted to act, and once she had played a real part in a piece they put on at Odd Fellows’ Hall in Fredonia, and she had done so well that even the Methodist minister said she was as good as the actress he saw in Lawrence Barrett’s company before he was saved; and he had hoped she wouldn’t be led away by her success and go on the real stage, because he could not regard it as a safe pursuit for young persons of her sex, owing to there being so little home life—­and now what did she do first?

This director had got very cold and businesslike once more.

“Stop talking first,” says he.  “Don’t let me hear another word from you.  And listen hard.  You’re sitting in your humble home sewing a button on your boy’s coat.  He’s your only joy in life.  There’s the coat and the button half sewed on with the needle and thread sticking in it.  Sit down and sew that button on as if you were doing it for your own son.  No pretending, mind you.  Sew it on as if—­”

He hesitated a minute and got a first-class inspiration.

“Sew it on as if it was a button on your husband’s coat that you told me about.  Every two or three stitches look up to show us how happy you are.  When you get it sewed, take the coat up this way and hug it.  You look still happier at that.  Then you walk over to the mantel, pick up the photograph of your boy that’s there by that china dog and kiss it.  I won’t tell you how to do that.  Remember who he is and do it your own way, only let us see your face.  Then put back the picture slowly, go get the coat, and start to the left as if you were going to hang it up in his room; but you hear steps on the stair outside and you know your boy has come home from work.  We see that because your face lights up.  Stand happy there till he comes in.

“You expect him to rush over to you as usual, but he’s cast down; something has happened.  You get a shock of fright.  Walk over to him—­slow; you’re scared.  Get your arms round him.  He stiffens at first, then leans on you.  He’s crying himself now, but you ain’t—­not yet.  You’re brave because you don’t know about this fight he’s had with the foreman that’s after your boy’s sweetheart for no good purpose.