ar that
salmon-pink chiffon and the yellow curls. Eight-thirty, Stage Four.
Goo'-by."

"Thanks, Countess! Me for the jumping tintypes at the hour named. I'm
glad enough to be doing even third business. How about Ma?"

"Sure! Tell her grand-dame stuff, chaperone or something, the gray
georgette and all her pearls and the cigarette case."

"I'll tell her. She'll be glad there's something doing once more on the
perpendicular stage. Goo'-by."

She stepped aside with "You're next, brother!" Merton Gill acknowledged
this with a haughty inclination of the head. He must not encourage this
hoyden. He glanced expectantly through the little window. His friend
held a telephone receiver at her ear. She smiled wearily. "All right,
son. You got evening clothes, haven't you? Of course, I remember now.
Stage Four at 8:30. Goo'-by."

"I want to thank you for this opportunity--" he began, but was pushed
aside by an athletic young woman who spoke from under a broad hat.
"Hullo, dearie! How about me and Ella?"

"Hullo, Maizie. All right. Stage Four, at 8:30, in your swellest evening
stuff."

At the door the Montague girl called to an approaching group who seemed
to have heard by wireless or occult means the report of new activity in
the casting office. "Hurry, you troupers. You can eat to-morrow night,
maybe!" They hurried. She turned to Merton Gill. "Seems like old times,"
she observed.

"Does it?" he replied coldly. Would this chit never understand that he
disapproved of her trifling ways?

He went on, rejoicing that he had not been compelled to part, even
temporarily, with a first-class full-dress suit, hitherto worn only in
the privacy of Lowell Hardy's studio. It would have been awkward, he
thought, if the demand for it had been much longer delayed. He would
surely have let that go before sacrificing his Buck Benson outfit. He
had traversed the eucalyptus avenue in this ecstasy, and was on a busier
thoroughfare. Before a motion-picture theatre he paused to study the
billing of Muriel Mercer in Hearts Aflame. The beauteous girl, in
an alarming gown, was at the mercy of a fiend in evening dress whose
hellish purpose was all too plainly read in his fevered eyes. The girl
writhed in his grasp. Doubtless he was demanding her hand in marriage.
It was a tense bit. And to-morrow he would act with this petted idol of
the screen. And under the direction of that Mr. Henshaw who seemed to
take screen art with proper seriousness. He won