t-pavers were at work, and sped purring out upon the boulevard
that stretched away to Hollywood and the hills. That was what she kept
hidden behind the "eternal calm" that so irritated Robert Grant Burns
and so delighted Dewitt and so interested Jim Gates, who studied her
for what "copy" there was in her personality.

It was the same when, the next day, Dewitt himself took her over to the
big plant which he spoke of as the studio. It was immense, and yet
Jean seemed unimpressed. She was gladder to see Pard and Lite again
than she was to meet the six-hundred-a-week star whose popularity she
seemed in a fair way to outrival. Men and women who were "in stock,"
and therefore within the social pale, were introduced to her and said
nice, hackneyed things about how they admired her work and were glad to
welcome her. She felt the warm air of good-fellowship that followed
her everywhere. All of these people seemed to accept her at once as
one of themselves. When she noticed it, she was amused at the way the
"extras" stood back and looked at her and whispered together. More
than once she overheard what seemed almost to have become a
catch-phrase out here; "Jean of the lazy A" was the phrase.

Jean was not made of wood, understand. In a manner she recognized all
these little tributes, and to a certain degree she appreciated them.
She was glad that she had made such a success of it, but she was glad
because it would help her to take her dad away from that horrible,
ghastly place and that horrible, ghastly death-in-life under which he
lived. In three years he had grown old and stooped--her dad!

And Burns twitted her ironically because she could not simper and lose
her head over the attentions these people were loading upon her! Save
for the fact that in this way she could earn a good deal of money, and
could pay that lawyer Rossman, and trace Art Osgood, she would not have
stayed; she could not have endured the staying. For the easier they
made life for her, the greater contrast did they make between her and
her dad.

Gil brought her a great bunch of roses, unbelievably beautiful and
fragrant, and laughed and told her they didn't look much like those
snowdrifts she waded through the last day they worked on the Lazy A
serial. For just a minute he thought Jean was going to throw them at
him, and he worried himself into sleeplessness, poor boy, wondering how
he had offended her, and how he could make amends. Could he h