ther. 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 p