Jean, of the Lazy A! Say, that title
alone will jump the releases ten per cent., if I know the game.
Featuring Jean herself; pictures made right at the Lazy A Ranch. Say,
the dope I can give our publicity man--"

Thereupon Jean, remembering Gil Huntley's lecture on the commercial
side of the proposition, startled his enthusiasm with one naive
question.

"How much will the Great Western Film Company pay me extra for
furnishing the story I play in?"

"How much?" Robert Grant Burns blurted the words automatically.

"Yes. How much? If it will jump your releases ten per cent. they
ought to pay me quite a lot more than they're paying me now."

"You're doing pretty well as it is," Burns reminded her, with a visible
dampening of his eagerness.

"For keeping your cut-and-dried stories from falling flat, yes. But
for writing the kind of play that will have just as many 'punches' and
still be true to life, and then for acting it all out and putting in
those punches,--that's a different matter, Mr. Burns. And you'll have
to pay Lite a decent salary, or I'll quit right here. I'm thinking up
stunts for us two that are awfully risky. You'll have to pay for that.
But it will be worth while. You wait till you see Lite in action!"

Gil would have been exuberant over the literal manner in which Jean was
taking his advice and putting it to the test, had he overheard her
driving her bargain with Robert Grant Burns. He would have been
exuberant, but he would never have dared to say the things that Jean
said, or to have taken the stand that she took. Robert Grant Burns
found himself very much in the position which Lite had occupied for
three years. He had well-defined ideas upon the subject before them,
and he had the outer semblance of authority; but his ideas and his
authority had no weight whatever with Jean, since she had made up her
mind.

Before Jean left the subject of salary, Robert Grant Burns found
himself committed to a promise of an increase, provided that Jean
really "delivered the goods" in the shape of a scenario serial, and did
the stunts which she declared she could and would do.

Before she settled down to the actual planning of scenes, Robert Grant
Burns had also yielded to her demands for Lite Avery, though you may
think that he thereby showed himself culpably weak, unless you realize
what sort of a person Jean was in argument. Without having more than a
good-morning acquaintance with Lite, Burns a