We'll call you up when work begins." He saw the Edgar Wayne film, a touching story in which the timid, diffident country boy triumphed over difficulties and won the love of a pure New York society girl, meantime protecting his mother from the insulting sneers of the idle rich and being made to suffer intensely by the apparent moral wreck of his dear little sister whom a rich scoundrel lured to the great city with false promises that he would make a fine lady of her.

Never before had he studied the acting method of Wayne with a definite aim in view.

Now he watched until he himself became the awkward country boy.

He was primed with the Wayne manner, the appealing ingenuousness, the simple embarrassments; the manly regard for the old mother, when word came that Baird was ready for him in the new piece.
This drama was strikingly like the Wayne piece he had watched, at least in its beginning.

Baird, in his striving for the better things, seemed at first to have copied his model almost too faithfully.