Another interior was of the neat living room of the humble home. Here were scenes of happy family life with the little sister and the fond old mother. The Montague girl was a charming picture in her simple print dress and sunbonnet beneath which hung her braid of golden hair. The mother was a sweet old dear, dressed as Baird had promised. She early confided to Merton that she was glad her part was not to be a mopping part. In that case she would have had to wear knee-pads, whereas now she was merely, she said, to be a tired business woman.

Still another interior was of her kitchen where she busily carried on her fruit-canning activities. Pots boiled on the stove and glass jars were filled with her product. One of the pots, Merton noticed, the largest, had a tightly closed top from which a slender tube of copper went across one corner of the little room to where it coiled in a bucket filled with water, whence it discharged its contents into bottles.

This, it seemed, was his mother's improved grape juice, a cooling drink to tempt the jaded palates of the city folks up at the big hotel.

The laboratory of the young inventor was abundantly filmed while the earnest country boy dreamed hopefully above his drawings or tinkered at metal devices on the work-bench. The kitchen in which his mother toiled was repeatedly shot, including close-ups of the old mother's ingenious contrivances--especially of the closed boiler with its coil of copper tubing--by which she was helping to save the humble home.

And a scene in the neat living room with its old-fashioned furniture made it all too clear that every effort would be required to save the little home. The cruel money-lender, a lawyer with mean-looking whiskers, confronted the three shrinking inmates to warn them that he must have his money by a certain day or out they would go into the streets. The old mother wept at this, and the earnest boy took her in his arms. The little sister, terrified by the man's rough words, also flew to this shelter, and thus he defied the intruder, calm, fearless, dignified. The money would be paid and the intruder would now please remember that, until the day named, this little home was their very own.

The scoundrel left with a final menacing wave of his gnarled hand; left the group facing ruin unless the invention could be perfected, unless Mother could sell an extraordinary quantity of fruit or improved grape juice to the city folks, or, indeed, unless the little sister could do something wonderful.

She, it now seemed, was confident she also could help. She stood apart from them and prettily promised to do something wonderful. She asked them to remember that she was no longer a mere girl, but a woman with a woman's determination. They both patted the little thing encouragingly on the back.

The interiors possible on the Holden lot having been finished, they motored each day to a remote edge of the city where outside locations had been found for the humble farmhouse and the grand hotel. The farmhouse was excellently chosen, Merton thought, being the neat, unpretentious abode of honest, hard-working people; but the hotel, some distance off, was not so grand, he thought, as Baird's new play seemed to demand. It was plainly a hotel, a wooden structure with balconies; but it seemed hardly to afford those attractions that would draw wealthier element from New York. He forebore to warn Baird of this, however, fearing to discourage a manager who was honestly striving for the serious in photodrama.