"Cut that!" said Merriam sharply. "Do you want me to tighten that noose again?"
Crockett subsided with a snort that might have made whole boards of directors tremble.
"Indecent!" said Merriam, enjoying himself hugely, as if he were still in college. "Certainly not! Only pretty. Very pretty. Come, Jennie! How about the pose?"
"I'll show you!" cried Jennie. Half dancing on her toes, with skirts fluttering, and eyes sparkling the more, it seemed, because of Crockett's bitterly hostile regard, she tripped around the table and stood by his side, facing the same way he faced. She plucked the rose from her hair and stuck it behind Crockett's ear. It drooped grotesquely over his thin hair. Then, laughing at the rose, she put one bare arm about his neck, her hand extending beyond his face on the other side.
"Give me a cocktail glass in that hand!" she cried. "Never mind what's in it. Anything!"
Merriam filled a glass from the siphon and put it into the hand referred to.
Then Jennie raised a pink leg and put it on the table, stretching straight in front of herself and Crockett towards the center of the board, amid the plates and glasses and crumpled napkins. She put her other hand under Crockett's chin as if about to tickle him, dropped her face close to his, and looked at Merriam with eyes of laughing inquiry.
"Fine!" said Merriam. "Are you ready, Margery?"
Margery was already pointing the camera.
"Not yet," she said.