ce, and I
sort of wanted to work on this particular lot." Instantly he saw himself
saving Beulah Baxter, for the next installment, from a fate worse than
death, but the one-time Spanish girl did not share this vision.

"Oh, well, little I care where I work. I had two days at the Bigart in a
hop-joint scene, and one over at the United doin' some board-walk stuff.
I could 'a' had another day there, but the director said I wasn't just
the type for a chick bathing-suit. He was very nice about it. Of course
I know my legs ain't the best part of me--I sure ain't one of them like
the girl that says she's wasted in skirts." She grinned ruefully.

He felt that some expression of sympathy would be graceful here, yet he
divined that it must be very discreetly, almost delicately, worded. He
could easily be too blunt.

"I guess I'd be pretty skinny in a bathing-suit myself, right now. I
know they won't be giving me any such part pretty soon if I have to cut
down on the meals the way I been doing."

"Oh, of course I don't mean I'm actually skinny--"

He felt he had been blunt, after all.

"Not to say skinny." she went on, "but--well, you know--more like
home-folks, I guess. Anyway, I got no future as a bathing beauty--none
whatever. And this walkin' around to the different lots ain't helpin'
me any, either. Of course it ain't as if I couldn't go back to the
insurance office. Mr. Gropp, he's office manager, he was very nice about
it. He says, 'I wish you all the luck in the world, girlie, and remember
your job as filin' clerk will always be here for you.' Wasn't that
gentlemanly of him? Still, I'd rather act than stand on my feet all day
filing letters. I won't go back till I have to."

"Me either," said Merton Gill, struggling against the obsession of
Saturday-night dinner at Gashwiler's.

Grimly he resumed his seat when the girl with a friendly "So long!" had
trudged on. In spite of himself he found something base in his nature
picturing his return to the emporium and to the thrice-daily encounter
with Metta Judson's cookery. He let his lower instincts toy with the
unworthy vision. Gashwiler would advance him the money to return, and
the job would be there. Probably Spencer Grant had before this tired
of the work and gone into insurance or some other line, and probably
Gashwiler would be only too glad to have the wanderer back. He would get
off No. 3 just in time for breakfast.

He brushed the monstrous scene from his eyes