“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 proprietor’s lovely daughter, for she was made to say: “You love above your station. Ours is 125th Street; you get off at 59th.” He was beginning to feel confused. A sense of loss, of panic, smote him. His own part was the intensely serious thing he had played, but in some subtle way even that was being made funny. He could not rush to embrace his old mother without exciting laughter. The robbery of the safe was effected by the dissolute son, the father broke in upon the love scene, discovered the loss of his money, and accused an innocent man. Merton felt that he here acted superbly. His long look at the girl for whom he was making the supreme sacrifice brought tears to his own eyes, but still the witless audience snickered. Unobserved by the others, the old mother now told her son the whereabouts of the stolen money, and he saw himself secure the paper sack of bills from the ice-box. He detected the half-guilty look of which he had spoken to Baird. Then he read his own incredible speech--“I better take this cool million. It might get that poor lad into trouble!” Again the piece had been hurt by a wrong subtitle. But perhaps the audience laughed because it was accustomed to laugh at Baird’s productions. Perhaps it had not realized that he was now attempting one of the worth-while things. This reasoning was refuted as he watched what occurred after he had made his escape.