door shut behind him for a minute. "Honest, boys, you want to hurry," he
called through the closed door. He waited until the sounds within
indicated that they were hurrying quite violently, and then he went his
way; and he still had the look in his eyes of one who bears in his soul a
secret guilt of which he is inclined to be proud.

When the Acme people gathered resignedly in the private projection room,
however, Luck's wicked little twinkle had turned a shade anxious. He
excused himself from the chair between Martinson and Mollie Ryan, the
stenographer, and went over to confer with the Happy Family and the dried
little man who kept clannishly together as usual, and he forgot to return
to his place.

The Acme people, personally and individually, were sick and tired of all
motion pictures that did not portray with vividness the beauty or the
talents of themselves, or the faults of their acquaintances. No Acme
people, save Lenore Honiwell and Tracy Gray Joyce and a phlegmatic
character woman, were in this picture at all. The camera man who took it
did not think highly of it and considered the wonderful photography as
good as wasted, and he had said as much--and more--to his intimates.
Beckitt, Luck's assistant, had privately announced it as the rottenest
piece of cheese he had ever seen under a Wild-West label, and disclaimed
all responsibility. They of the cutting and trimming clan had not said
anything at all. Martinson, having heard the rumors, felt that they
confirmed his own suspicion that Luck had made a big blunder in bringing
those cowboys into the company. They were not actors. They did not
pretend to be actors.

You will see that it was a critical audience indeed that gathered there
in the projection room that rainy afternoon to see the trial run of _The