imsically,
"and tell me whether it's to be braids or curls, so I can go and make
up." At that moment she saw Gil Huntley beckoning to her with a
frantic kind of furtiveness that was a fair mixture of pinched-together
eyebrows and slight jerkings of the head, and a guarded movement of his
hand that hung at his side. Gil, she thought, was trying to draw her
away before she went too far with her trouble-inviting freedom of
speech. She laughed lazily.

"Braids or curls?" she insisted. "And please, sir, I won't do so no
more, honest."

Robert Grant Burns looked at her from under his eyebrows and made a
sound between his grunt of indignation and his chuckle of amusement.
"Sure you won't?" he queried shortly. "Stay the way you are, if you
want to; chances are you won't go to work right away, anyhow."

Jean flashed him a glance of inquiry. Did that mean that she had at
last gone beyond the limit? Was Robert Grant Burns going to FIRE her?
She looked at Gil, who was sauntering off with the perfectly apparent
expectation that she would follow him; and Mrs. Gay, who was regarding
her with a certain melancholy conviction that Jean's time as leading
woman was short indeed. She pursed her lips with a rueful resignation,
and followed Gil to the spring behind the house.

"Say, you mustn't hand out things like that, Jean!" he protested, when
they were quite out of sight and hearing of the others. "Let me give
you a tip, girl. If you've got any photo-play ideas that are worth
talking about, don't go spreading them out like that for Bobby to pick
and choose!"

"Pick to pieces, you mean," Jean corrected.

"You're going to tell me I'm in bad. But I can't help it; he's putting on
some awfully stagey plots, and they cost just as much to produce as--"

"Listen here. You've got me wrong. That plot of yours could be worked
up into a dandy series; the idea of a story running through a lot of
pictures is great. What I mean is, it's worth something. You don't
have to give stuff like that away, make him a present of it, you know.
I just want to put you wise. If you've got anything that's worth
using, make 'em pay for it. Put 'er into scenario form and sell it to
'em. You're in this game to make money, so why overlook a bet like
that?"

"Oh, Gil! Could I?"

"Sure, you could! No reason why you shouldn't, if you can deliver the
goods. Burns has been writing his own plays to fit his company; but
aside from the features you'v