“But I do tell you just that. It won’t hurt Parmalee a bit; and Benson can go on Bensoning to the end of time--to big money. You keep forgetting this twenty-million audience. Go out and buy a picture magazine and read it through, just to remind you. They want hokum, and pay for it. Even this thing of Baird’s, with all the saving slapstick, is over the heads of a good half of them. I’ll make a bet with you now, anything you name, that it won’t gross two thirds as much as Benson’s next Western, and in that they’ll cry their eyes out when he kisses his horse good-bye. See if they don’t. Or see if they don’t bawl at the next old gray-haired mother with a mop and a son that gets in bad. “Why, if you give ‘em hokum they don’t even demand acting. Look at our own star, Mercer. You know as well as I do that she not only can’t act, but she’s merely a beautiful moron. In a world where right prevailed she’d be crowned queen of the morons without question. She may have an idea that two and two make four, but if she has it’s only because she believes everything she hears. And look at the mail she gets. Every last one of the twenty million has written to tell her what a noble actress she is. She even believes that. “Baird can keep on with the burlesque stuff, but his little old two-reelers’ll probably have to pay for it, especially if he keeps those high-priced people. I’ll bet that one new man of his sets him back seven hundred and fifty a week. The Lord knows he’s worth every cent of it. My boy, tell me, did you ever in all your life see a lovelier imitation of a perfectly rotten actor? There’s an artist for you. Who is he, anyway? Where’d he come from?” Merton Gill again listened; he was merely affecting to busy himself with a fork. It was good acting. “I don’t know,” replied Henshaw. “Some of the crowd last night said he was just an extra that Baird dug up on the lot here. And, on the subject of burlesque, they also said Baird was having him do some Edgar Wayne stuff in a new one.” “Fine!” The Governor beamed. “Can’t you see him as the honest, likable country boy? I bet he’ll be good to his old mother in this one, too, and get the best of the city slickers in the end. For heaven’s sake don’t let me miss it! This kid last night handed me laughs that were better than a month’s vacation for this old carcass of mine. You say he was just an extra?” “That’s what I heard last night. Anyway, he’s all you say he is as an artist. Where do you suppose he got it? Do you suppose he’s just the casual genius that comes along from time to time? And why didn’t he stay ‘straight’ instead of playing horse with the sacred traditions of our art? That’s what troubled me as I watched him. Even in that wild business with the spurs he was the artist every second. He must have tricked those falls but I couldn’t catch him at it. Why should such a man tie up with Baird?”