Hunter Mangan clenched his big tanned fists. He knew what kind of a face she had, and he was trembling to take her in his arms and kiss every inch of it, from the piquant chin to the chestnut hair. “Cradle robber!” he growled to himself; then remembering that this girl was nineteen, he marveled the more.
“You won’t go to Stlingbloke again, will you?” he pleaded. “Not with just Martin, anyway. Go with your father or with me, if your curiosity won’t let you keep away.”
“Oh, I suppose not. Unless Mart persists in going. Then I’ll have to go for his sake, I suppose. I like the color of it, though.”
“Humph! It seems that for the manager-to-be of a moving picture star Mart plays second fiddle to the managed,” he observed dryly.
“Oh, that would be just a convenient business arrangement,” she explained. “I’d be the boss, of course. Stars really are, aren’t they? But I’d want Mart along—I couldn’t live without the little nut!—and he’d be my manager—a mere figure-head, of course.”
Gravity gave way to the inevitable, and Hunter Mangan was lost.
“And now,” he said finally, “I have a more intimate matter still that I wish to discuss with you. I certainly hope I’ll be forgiven. I’m usually pretty blunt, though. So here I go with my head down and both eyes shut:
“Why have you courted the friendship of Falcon the Flunky?”
“Why, I like him,” was the swift reply. “What’s the matter with The Falcon?”
“I am glad to be able to say that, so far as I know, there is nothing the matter with him. However, it strikes me—and all the rest of us, I suppose—as a strange comradeship.”