Beta Book

"Lots of colors. Hope I see
foreign stuff like that in the moving pictures."
He came primly up to the Nickelorion, feeling in his vest
pockets for a nickel and peering around the booth at the
friendly ticket-taker. But the latter was thinking about buying
Johnny's pants. Should he get them at the Fourteenth Street
Store, or Siegel-Cooper's, or over at Aronson's, near home?
So ruminating, he twiddled his wheel mechanically, and Mr. Wrenn's
pasteboard slip was indifferently received in the plate-glass
gullet of the grinder without the taker's even seeing the
clerk's bow and smile.
Mr. Wrenn trembled into the door of the Nickelorion. He wanted
to turn back and rebuke this fellow, but was restrained by
shyness. He _had_ liked the man's "Fine evenin', sir "--rain
or shine--but he wouldn't stand for being cut. Wasn't he making
nineteen dollars a week, as against the ticket-taker's ten
or twelve? He shook his head with the defiance of a cornered
mouse, fussed with his mustache, and regarded the moving
pictures gloomily.


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