Page:Wilson - Merton of the Movies (1922).djvu/138

 greeted her. "That's one great slogan, 'Business as Usual!' ain't it? Well, it's business as usual here, so I just found out from the Countess—as usual, rotten. I ain't had but three days since I seen you last."

"I haven't had even one," he told her.

"No? Say, that's tough. You're registered with the Service Bureau, ain't you?"

"Well, I didn't do that, because they might send me any place, and I sort of wanted to work on this particular lot." Instantly he saw himself saving Beulah Baxter, for the next installment, from a fate worse than death, but the one-time Spanish girl did not share this vision.

"Oh, well, little I care where I work. I had two days at the Bigart in a hop-joint scene, and one over at the United doin' some board-walk stuff. I could 'a' had another day there, but the director said I wasn't just the type for a chick bathing-suit. He was very nice about it. Of course I know my legs ain't the best part of me I sure ain't one of them like the girl that says she's wasted in skirts." She grinned ruefully.

He felt that some expression of sympathy would be graceful here, yet he divined that it must be very discreetly, almost delicately, worded. He could easily be too blunt.

"I guess I'd be pretty skinny in a bathing-suit myself, right now. I know they won't be giving me any such part pretty soon if I have to cut down on the meals the way I been doing."

"Oh, of course I don't mean I'm actually skinny"

He felt he had been blunt, after all.

"Not to say skinny," she went on, "but—well, you know—more like home-folks, I guess. Anyway, I got no future as a bathing beauty—none whatever. And this walkin' around to the different lots ain't helpin' me any, either. Of course it ain't as if I couldn't go back to the insurance office. Mr. Gropp, he's office manager, he was very nice about it. He says, 'I wish you all the luck in the world, girlie, and remember your job as filin' clerk will always be here for you.'