Perhaps Wellington Bunn was disappointed that Mr. Pertell did not at once beg him to reconsider his resignation, and to stay his parting steps, for the actor had turned aside after issuing his defiance, and started toward the house, as though to carry out his threat, pack up and go back to New York.
But the manager did not call after Mr. Bunn to stay. All he said was:
"Very well, Mr. Bunn, if you resign now, without the two weeks' notice called for in your contract, you need not expect another engagement with me, nor with any of the moving picture associations with which I am connected. I am not asking you to do anything very difficult."
"But to ride a mule! Great Scott! I can't do that, my dear sir!"
"Yes, a horse, perhaps; but not a mule. Why, a mule kicks!"
"Oh, I don't believe this one will kick," replied the manager. "Anyhow, I want you to ride him. There is to be a comic part to this play, and I look to you to provide it. You will blacken your face and----"
"Black up and take the part of a colored man--me, Wellington Bunn--who has played the classic Shakespeare--do blackface? Never!"
"You forget that Shakespeare's Othello was a colored man, I guess," laughed Mr. Pertell, "and you told me you had played that character."
"So I have, but Othello was a Moor--not a common black-faced comedian. He was brown, rather than black."
"Well, we'll go a few shades darker, and be real black, in your case," suggested Mr. Pertell. "And you'll have to ride the mule. It is necessary to make the scene a success."
"Very well. But when this engagement is over no more moving pictures for me! I am through with them!"
"We'll see," replied the manager, as he went on with his preparations for the new play. Nearly the whole company were to take part in this, and Tommy and Nellie had parts that pleased them very much.
"I'm to drive a little goat cart!" exclaimed the small lad, "and you're to ride with me, Nellie."
"Oh, that will be fun!" she cried, clapping her hands. "But your goat won't bite; will he?"
"I won't let him bite you, anyhow," promised Tommy, kindly.
Although Mr. Bunn had tacitly agreed to ride the mule, he had many misgivings on the subject, and several times he might have been seen standing near the animal, carefully studying it, as though it were a piece of complicated machinery that had to be mastered in detail.