hat I want is a speedy, sassy little boat that can _travel_.
Well, and listen. We'll have plenty to live on till we both land in
stock. I've got a good chance right now to work into a comedy company;
they say my grin screens like a million dollars, and when it comes to
making a comedy getaway I'm just geared right, somehow, to pull a laugh.
That college picture we made got me a lot of notice in the projection
room, and I was only doing mob stuff, at that. But I stood out. And
Walt's promised me a fat little bit in this five-reeler. I'll land in
stock before the summer's half over!

"And you can land with some good company if you just make a stab at it.
Your eyes and that trick of looking up under your eyebrows are just the
type for these sob leads, and you've got a good photographic face: a
_good_ face for it," he emphasized generously. "And your figure couldn't
be beat. Believe me, I know. You ought to see some of them Janes--and at
that, they manage to get by with their stuff. A little camera experience,
under a good director that would bring out your good points--I was going
to spring the idea before, but I knew dad wouldn't stand for it."

"But we've got to go and live on that claim. We've _got_ to."

Vic's face purpled. "Say, are you plumb _bugs_? Why--" Vic gulped and
stuttered. "Say, where do you get that stuff? You better tie a can to it,
sis; it don't get over with me. I'm for screen fame, and I'm going to get
it too. Why, by the time I'm twenty, I'll betcha I can pull down a salary
that'll make Charlie Chaplin look like an extra! Why, my grin--"

"Your grin you can use on the goats," Helen May quelled unfeelingly. "I
only hope it won't scare the poor things to death. You needn't argue
about it--as if I was crazy to go! Do you think I want to leave Los
Angeles, and everybody I know, and everything I care about, and go to New
Mexico and live like a savage, and raise goats? I'd rather go to jail, if
you ask me. I hate the very thought of a ranch, Vic Stevenson, and you
know I do. But that doesn't matter a particle. Dad--"

"I told you dad was crazy!" Vic's tone was too violent for grief. His
young ambitions were in jeopardy, and even his dad's death must look
unimportant alongside the greater catastrophe that threatened. "Do you
think, for gosh sake, the whole family's got to be nutty just because he
was sick and got a queer streak?"

"You've no right to say that. Dad--knew what he was doing."

"Aw, where d