he
had once been an ornament of the speaking stage. His wife, also, was
friendly of manner, and spoke in a deep contralto somewhat roughened by
wear but still notable.

The daughter Merton did not like. She was not unattractive in
appearance, though her features were far off the screen-heroine model,
her nose being too short, her mouth too large, her cheekbones too
prominent, and her chin too square. Indeed, she resembled too closely
her father, who, as a man, could carry such things more becomingly.
She was a slangy chit, much too free and easy in her ways, Merton
considered, and revealing a self-confidence that amounted almost to
impudence. Further, her cheeks were brown, her brief nose freckled,
and she did not take the pains with her face that most of the beautiful
young women who waited there had so obviously taken. She was a
harum-scarum baggage with no proper respect for any one, he decided,
especially after the day she had so rudely accosted one of the passing
directors. He was a more than usually absorbed director, and with drawn
brows would have gone unseeing through the waiting room when the girl
hailed him.

"Oh, Mr. Henshaw, one moment please!"

He glanced up in some annoyance, pausing with his hand to the door that
led on to his proper realm.

"Oh, it's you, Miss Montague! Well, what is it? I'm very, very busy."

"Well, it's something I wanted to ask you." She quickly crossed the room
to stand by him, tenderly flecking a bit of dust from his coat sleeve as
she began, "Say, listen, Mr. Henshaw: Do you think beauty is a curse to
a poor girl?"

Mr. Henshaw scowled down into the eyes so confidingly lifted to his.

"That's something you won't ever have to worry about," he snapped, and
was gone, his brows again drawn in perplexity over his work.

"You're not angry with poor little me, are you, Mr. Henshaw?"

The girl called this after him and listened, but no reply came from back
of the partition.

Mrs. Montague, from the bench, rebuked her daughter.

"Say, what do you think that kidding stuff will get you? Don't you want
to work for him any more?"

The girl turned pleading eyes upon her mother.

"I think he might have answered a simple question," said she.

This was all distasteful to Merton Gill. The girl might, indeed, have
deserved an answer to her simple question, but why need she ask it of so
busy a man? He felt that Mr. Henshaw's rebuke was well merited, for her
own beauty was surely not