glints in her eyes as she
handed it back to him. "No; I'll tell you, it'll be my watch until you
pay me back, but you keep it for me. I haven't any place to carry it
except the pocket of my jacket, and I might lose it, and then where'd we
be?"

"Well, all right." He cheerfully took back the watch. His present
ecstasy would find him agreeable to all proposals.

"And say," continued the girl, "what about this Gashweiler, or whatever
his name is? He said he'd take you back, did he? A farm?"

"No, an emporium--and you forgot his name just the way that lady in the
casting office always does. She's funny. Keeps telling me not to forget
the address, when of course I couldn't forget the town where I lived,
could I? Of course it's a little town, but you wouldn't forget it when
you lived there a long time--not when you got your start there."

"So you got your start in this town, did you?"

He wanted to talk a lot now. He prattled of the town and his life there,
of the eight-hour talent-tester and the course in movie-acting. Of
Tessie Kearns and her scenarios, not yet prized as they were sure to be
later. Of Lowell Hardy, the artistic photographer, and the stills that
he had made of the speaker as Clifford Armytage. Didn't she think that
was a better stage name than Merton Gill, which didn't seem to sound
like so much? Anyway, he wished he had his stills here to show her. Of
course some of them were just in society parts, the sort of thing that
Harold Parmalee played--had she noticed that he looked a good deal like
Harold Parmalee? Lots of people had.

Tessie Kearns thought he was the dead image of Parmalee. But he liked
Western stuff better--a lot better than cabaret stuff where you had
to smoke one cigarette after another--and he wished she could see the
stills in the Buck Benson outfit, chaps and sombrero and spurs and
holster. He'd never had two guns, but the one he did have he could draw
pretty well. There would be his hand at his side, and in a flash he
would have the gun in it, ready to shoot from the hip. And roping--he'd
need to practise that some. Once he got it smack over Dexter's head, but
usually it didn't go so well.

Probably a new clothesline didn't make the best rope--too stiff. He
could probably do a lot better with one of those hair ropes that the
real cowboys used. And Metta Judson--she was the best cook anywhere
around Simsbury. He mustn't forget to write to Metta, and to Tessie
Kearns, to be sure and