"I'll help you," she declared, and gave him her hand a second time.
CHAPTER XXVIII
STORM CLOUDS THREATEN
The next week Gusty Durgin made her debut as a picture actress. She had pestered Mr. Bane morn, noon, and night at the hotel until finally the leading man obtained Mr. Anscomb's permission to work the buxom waitress into a picture.
"But nothin' funny, Mr. Bane," Gusty begged. "Land sakes! It's the easiest thing in the world to get a laugh out of a fat woman fallin' down a sand bank, or a fat man bein' busted in the face with a custard pie. I don't want folks to laugh at my fat. I want 'em to forget that I am fat."
"Do you know, Miss Grayling," said Bane, recounting this to Louise, "that is art. Gusty has the right idea. Many a floweret is born to blush unseen, the poet says. But can it be we have found in Gusty Durgin a screen artist in embryo?"
Louise was interested enough to go to the beach early to watch Gusty in a moving picture part.
"A real sad piece 'tis, too," the waitress confided to Louise. "I got to make up like a mother—old, you know, and real wrinkled. And when my daughter (she's Miss Noyes) is driv' away from home by her father because she's done wrong, I got to take on like kildee 'bout it. It's awful touchin'. I jest cried about it ha'f the night when this Mr. Anscomb told me what I'd have to do in the picture.
"Land sakes! I can cry re'l tears with the best of 'em—you see if I can't, Miss Grayling. You ought to be a movie actress yourself. It don't seem just right that you ain't."
"But I fear I could not weep real tears," Louise said.