“There was a reason.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Compton, in a tone at once exclamatory and interrogatory.
“Yes. At home when I came to that prayer I always looked at the picture of the guardian angel which hung just above mamma’s head.”
“And you looked around my walls among the pictures to see whether you could find a picture of the guardian angel, eh?”
“Yes, uncle; but I didn’t find a picture anything like one.”
“I should say not!” said Compton with energy. “But, Bobby, I was glad last night when you prayed for me. I hope you’ll keep it up.”
“Aha!” cried Bobby dramatically, jumping in front of his uncle and shaking a triumphant finger at him. “So you do believe in prayer.”
“In your prayers, Bobby. Put that finger down and stop your jigging; everybody is looking at us.”
As a matter of fact, Bobby had achieved a feat seldom achieved on the Hollywood Boulevard. He had, unintentionally of course, excited the attention of nearly every one he had encountered. Now on the gay and festive Hollywood Boulevard, be it known, all varieties of dress and action are to be seen, and nobody seems to bother about them. In the solemn watches of the night cavalcades of cowboys on horseback may come clattering along, shooting in the real sense of the word, and shouting. Possibly some light sleeper may rouse sufficiently to grasp the situation. Turning in his bed, he remarks: “There go them moving-picture fellers again,” and resumes his interrupted slumbers. There’s an old man, white-bearded, redfaced from exposure, bare-footed, clad in a modern substitute for the garments of St. John, and wearing a staff. He is frequently seen on the street, but nobody seems to be concerned so much as to take a second look.
I forgot to say that this imitation St. John the Baptist goes bareheaded. Practically all the men on the boulevard go bareheaded. I myself, I dare say, could patrol that famous thoroughfare in cassock and biretta without exciting any further comment than, “I wonder what picture that fellow’s made up for.” Painted ladies—painted so profusely that their own mothers would not know them—would there escape comment or criticism. It would be taken for granted that they were actresses. The camera would mitigate their extravagance, and their presentment on the screen would be entirely lacking the grossness of their real flesh-and-blood appearances. But Bobby, gay and smiling, taking off now the stride of his uncle, now the gait of a passing flapper, woke the street from its passive acquiescence in all things queer.