id of playing scenes with the cross-eyed
man, but Mr. Baird said he was trying so hard to do serious work, so I
wouldn't have him discharged. But shouldn't you think he'd save up and
have his eyes straightened? Does he get a very small salary?"

The girl seemed again to be harassed by conflicting emotions, but
mastered them to say, "I don't know exactly what it is, but I guess he
draws down about twelve fifty a week."

"Only twelve dollars and fifty cents a week!"

"Twelve hundred and fifty," said the girl firmly.

"Twelve hundred and fifty dollars a week!" This was monstrous,
incredible. "But then why doesn't he have his eyes--"

Miss Montague drew him to her with both her capable arms. "My boy, my
boy!" she murmured, and upon his painted forehead she now imprinted
a kiss of deep reverence. "Run along and play," she ordered. "You're
getting me all nervous." Forthwith she moved to the centre of the yard
where the tight-rope walker still endangered his life above the heads of
a vast audience.

She joined him. She became a performer on the slack wire. With a parasol
to balance her, she ran to the centre of an imaginary wire that swayed
perilously, and she swung there, cunningly maintaining a precarious
balance. Then she sped back to safety at the wire's end, threw down her
parasol, caught the handkerchief thrown to her by the first performer,
and daintily touched her face with it, breathing deeply the while and
bowing.

He thought Sarah was a strange child--"One minute one thing and the next
minute something else."

CHAPTER XVII. MISS MONTAGUE USES HER OWN FACE

Work on the piece dragged slowly to an end. In these latter days the
earnest young leading man suffered spells of concern for his employer.
He was afraid that Mr. Baird in his effort to struggle out of the slough
of low comedy was not going to be wholly successful. He had begun to
note that the actors employed for this purpose were not invariably
serious even when the cameras turned. Or, if serious, they seemed
perhaps from the earnestness of their striving for the worth-while
drama, to be a shade too serious. They were often, he felt,
over-emphatic in their methods. Still, they were, he was certain, good
actors. One could always tell what they meant.

It was at these times that he especially wished he might be allowed to
view the "rushes." He not only wished to assure himself for Baird's sake
that the piece would be acceptably serious, but he