His shaven lips curled.
“Aren’t you playing a part, Miss—can’t remember your name—Leamington, is it?”
“I’m certainly playing—I’m one of the figures in the background,” she smiled. “I don’t want a big part, but I’m sure I could do better than I have done.”
“I’m mighty sure you couldn’t do worse than some people,” he growled. “No, there’s no part for you, friend. There’ll be no story to shoot unless things alter. That’s what!”
She was going away when he recalled her.
“Left a good home, I guess?” he said. “Thought picture-making meant a million dollars a year an’ a new automobile every Thursday? Or maybe you were holding down a good job as a stenographer and got it under your toque that you’d make Hollywood feel small if you got your chance? Go back home, kid, and tell the old man that a typewriter’s got a sunlight arc beaten to death as an instrument of commerce.”
The girl smiled faintly.
“I didn’t come into pictures because I was stage-struck, if that is what you mean, Mr. Knebworth. I came in knowing just how hard a life it might be. I have no parents.”
He looked up at her curiously.
“How do you live?” he asked. “There’s no money in ‘extra’ work—not on this lot, anyway. Might be if I was one of those billion dollar directors who did pictures with chariot races. But I don’t. My ideal picture has got five characters.”