CHARITY DEAR,--This will acquaint you with a very clever girl, Miss Grace Havender. Her mother was a school friend of mine. Miss Havender arranges to have moving pictures taken of people. They are ever so much quainter than stupid still-life pictures. Posterity ought to see you with your poor wounded soldiers, but meanwhile we really should have a chance to perpetuate you as you are. You are always on the go, and an ordinary picture does not represent you.

Anyway, you will be nice to Miss Havender, for the sake of

Yours affectionately,

MARTHA NOXON.

Charity did not want a picture of herself, but she went down to get rid of Miss Havender politely and to recommend her to friends of greater pa.s.sion for their own likenesses. Miss Havender was a forward young person and launched at once into a defense of moving pictures.

"Oh, I admire the movies immensely," Charity interposed. "We had some of them in the hospitals abroad. If you could have seen that dear Charlie Chaplin convulse a whole ward of battered soldiers and make them forget their pain and their anxieties! He was more of a nurse than a hundred of us. If he isn't a benefactor, I don't know who is. Oh, I admire the movies, but I'd rather see them than be them, you know.

"Still, an idea has just occurred to me. You know I'm terribly in need of a pile of money."

Miss Havender looked about her and smiled.

"Oh, I don't mean for myself. I have far too much, but for the soldiers.

I want something that will bring in a big sum. It occurs to me that if a lot of us got up a story and acted it ourselves, it would be tremendously interesting to--well, to ourselves. And our friends would flock to see it. Amateur performances are ghastly from an artistic standpoint, but they're great fun.

"It just struck me that if we got up a play and had a cast made up of Mr. Jim Dyckman and Tom Duane and Winnie Nicolls and Miss Bettany and the young Stowe Webbs and Mrs. Neff and people like that it would be dreadfully bad art, but much more amusing than if we had all the stars in the world--Mr. Drew and his daughter and his niece Miss Barrymore and her brothers, and Miss Anglin and Miss Bates or Miss Adams or anybody like that. Don't you think so? Or what do you think? Could it be done, or has it been--or what about it?"

Miss Havender gasped. She saw new vistas of business opening before her.

"Yes, it has been done in a small way, and it was great fun, as you say; but it would have been more fun if it hadn't been so crude. What you would need would be a director who was not an amateur. Now, our director is marvelous--Mr. Ferriday. He's the Belasco of the photoplays. He's as great as Griffith. He takes his art like a priest. If you had him you could do wonders."

"Then we must have him, by all means," said Charity, smiling a little at the gleam in Miss Havender's eyes. She had a feeling that Miss Havender had a deep, personal interest in Mr. Ferriday. Miss Havender had; most of the women in his environs had. In the first place, he was powerful and could increase or diminish or check salaries. He distributed places and patronage with a royal prerogative. But he was hungry for praise and suffered from the lack of social prestige granted "the new art."

Miss Havender seconded Charity's motion with enthusiasm. After a long conference it was agreed that Miss Havender should broach the matter to the great Mr. Ferriday while Charity recruited actors and authors.

As Charity rummaged in her hand-bag for a pencil to write Miss Havender's telephone number with, she turned out Kedzie Thropp's crumpled, shabby card. She started.

"Oh, for Heaven's sake! The poor child! I had forgotten her completely.

You might be able to do something for her. This Miss Adair is the prettiest thing, and I promised to get her a job. She might photograph splendidly. Won't you try to find her a place?"

"I'll guarantee her one," said Miss Havender, who was sure that the firm would be glad to put Mrs. Cheever under obligations. The firm was in need of patronage, as Mr. Ferriday's lavish expenditures had crippled its treasury, while his artistic whims had held up the delivery of nearly finished films.

Miss Havender told Charity to send the girl to her at the office any day and she would take care of her. Charity kept Kedzie's card in her hand, and, as soon as Miss Havender was gone, ran to her desk to write Kedzie.

She told a pale lie--it seemed a gratuitous insult to confess that she had forgotten.

DEAR MISS ADAIR,--Please forgive my delay in keeping my promise, but I have been unable to find anything likely to interest you till to-day.

But now Miss Grace Havender, of the Hyperfilm Company, has just a.s.sured me that if you will call on her at her office she will see that you are engaged. You will photograph so beautifully that I am sure you will have a great career. Please don't fail to call on Miss Havender.

Yours, with best wishes,

CHARITY C. CHEEVER.

She sent the letter to the address Kedzie had given her--which was that of Kedzie's abandoned boarding-house.

CHAPTER VI

Since Kedzie, by the time her marriage had reached its first morning-after, had already found her brand-new husband odious, there was small hope of her learning to like him or their poverty better on close acquaintance.

When he left her for his office she missed him, and her heart warmed toward him till he came home again. He always brought new disillusionment with him. He spent his hours out of office in bewailing his luck, celebrating the hardness of the times, and proclaiming the hopelessness of his prospects.

And then one evening he arrived with so doleful a countenance that Kedzie took pity on him. She perched herself on his lap and asked him what was worrying him.

"Nothing much, honey," he groaned, "except that I've lost my job."

Kedzie was thunderstruck. She breathed the expletive she learned from her latest companions. "My Gawd!"

Gilfoyle nodded dreadfully: "Business has been bad, anyway. Kalteyer, with his chewing-gum, was about our only big customer, and now he's gone bust. Yep. The bank's shut down on his loans, and he was caught with a mountain of bills on his hands. And the Breathasweeta Chewing Gum stopped selling. People didn't seem to take to the perfume idea."

"I just hate people!" Kedzie growled, pacing the floor.

Gilfoyle went on, bitterly: "Remember how they all said I was such a genius for thinking up the name 'Breathasweeta,' and the perfumery idea?

And how they liked my catch-phrase?"

Kedzie nodded.

Gilfoyle grew sarcastic: "Well, a man's a genius if he succeeds, and a fool if he doesn't. I'm just as sure as ever that there's a fortune in Breathasweeta. But when Kalteyer's bankers got cold feet I lost my halo. He and Kiam have been roasting the life out of me. They blame me!

They've kept knocking me and quoting 'Kiss me again--who are you?' and then groaning. It's funny. I loved it when everybody else said it was great. But I didn't care much for it myself, the way they said it."

Kedzie flung herself on the tremulous wabbly-legged divan. Kedzie didn't like the phrase, either, now. When he had first smitten it from his brain she had thought it an inspiration and him a king. Now it sounded silly, coa.r.s.e, a little indecent. Of course it had not succeeded. How could he ever have been so foolish as to utter it--"Kiss me again--who are you?" Why, it was vulgar!

Gilfoyle looked dismally incompetent as he drooped and mumbled. It is hard to tell an autobiography of failure and look one's best.

"Didn't you tell him you was--you were married?" queried Kedzie.

"I hadn't the courage."

"Courage! Well, I like that! So you're fired! Just like me. Funny! And here we are, married and all. My Gaw--"

"Here we are, married and all. They'll let me finish the week, but my goose is cooked, I guess. Jobs are mighty scarce in my line of business.

Everybody's poor except the munitions crowd. I wish I knew how to make dynamite."

Kedzie pushed her wet hair back from her brow and tore her waist open a little deeper at the throat. This was carrying the joke of marriage a little too far even for her patient soul.

Soon Gilfoyle's office was closed to him and he was at home almost all day. That finished him with Kedzie.

He had not improved on connubial acquaintance. He was lazy and sloven of mornings, and since he had no office to go to he grew more neglectful of his appearance than ever. His end-to-end cigarettes got on Kedzie's nerves and cost a nagging amount of money, especially as she could not learn to like them herself.

He tried to write poetry for the magazines and permanently destroyed what little respect Kedzie had for the art. Hunting for some little love-word that was unimportant when found threw him into frenzies of rage. He went about mumbling gibberish.

"What in h.e.l.l rhymes with _heaven_?" he would snarl. "_Beven, ceven, Devon, fevon, gevin, given_--" And so on to "_zeven_." Then "_breven, creven, dreven_" and "_bleven, eleven, dleven_" and "_pseven, spleven, threven_" and so forth.