uit her in
these matters. She did accept the bill, still she was not the heartless
creature he had supposed her to be.

As he bade her good-night at the door she regarded him closely and said,
"Somehow you look a whole lot older, Mr. Armytage."

"I am," replied Mr. Armytage.

* * * * * * *

Miss Montague, after parting with her protege had walked quickly, not
without little recurrent dance steps--as if some excess of joy would
ever and again overwhelm her--to the long office building on the Holden
lot, where she entered a door marked "Buckeye Comedies. Jeff Baird,
Manager." The outer office was vacant, but through the open door to
another room she observed Baird at his desk, his head bent low over
certain sheets of yellow paper. He was a bulky, rather phlegmatic
looking man, with a parrot-like crest of gray hair. He did not look up
as the girl entered. She stood a moment as if to control her excitement,
then spoke.

"Jeff, I found a million dollars for you this morning."

"Thanks!" said Mr. Baird, still not looking up. "Chuck it down in the
coal cellar, will you? We're littered with the stuff up here."

"On the level, Jeff."

Baird looked up. "On the level?"

"You'll say so."

"Shoot!"

"Well, he's a small-town hick that saved up seventy-two dollars to
come here from Goosewallow, Michigan, to go into pictures-took a
correspondence course in screen--acting and all that, and he went broke
and slept in a property room down in the village all last week; no eats
at all for three, four days. I'd noticed him around the lot on different
sets; something about him that makes you look a second time. I don't
know what it is-kind of innocent and bug-eyed the way he'd rubber at
things, but all the time like as if he thought he was someone. Well, I
keep running across him and pretty soon I notice he's up against it. He
still thinks he's someone, and is very up-stage if you start to kid him
the least bit, but the signs are there, all right. He's up against it
good and hard.

"All last week he got to looking worse and worse. But he still had his
stage presence. Say, yesterday he looked like the juvenile lead of a
busted road show that has walked in from Albany and was just standing
around on Broadway wondering who he'd consent to sign up with for forty
weeks--see what I mean?-hungry but proud. He was over on the Baxter set
last night while I was doing the water stuff, and you'd ought to see him
freeze me when I suggeste