Page:Wilson - Merton of the Movies (1922).djvu/139

 Wasn't that gentlemanly of him? Still, I'd rather act than stand on my feet all day filing letters. I won't go back till I have to."

"Me either," said Merton Gill, struggling against the obsession of Saturday-night dinner at Gashwiler's.

Grimly he resumed his seat when the girl with a friendly "So long!" had trudged on. In spite of himself he found something base in his nature picturing his return to the emporium and to the thrice-daily encounter with Metta Judson's cookery. He let his lower instincts toy with the unworthy vision. Gashwiler would advance him the money to return, and the job would be there. Probably Spencer Grant had before this tired of the work and gone into insurance or some other line, and probably Gashwiler would be only too glad to have the wanderer back. He would get off No. 3 just in time for breakfast.

He brushed the monstrous scene from his eyes, shrugged it from his shoulders. He would not give up. They had all struggled and sacrificed, and why should he shrink from the common ordeal? But he wished the Spanish girl hadn't talked about going back to her job. He regretted not having stopped her with words of confident cheer that would have stiffened his own resolution. He could see her far down the street, on her way to the next lot, her narrow shoulders switching from light to shadow as she trudged under the line of eucalyptus trees. He hoped she wouldn't give up. No one should ever give up—least of all Merton Gill.

The days wore wearily on. He began to feel on his own face the tired little smile of the woman in the casting office as she would look up to shake her head, often from the telephone over which she was saying: "Nothing to-day, dear. Sorry!" She didn't exactly feel that the motion picture business had gone on the rocks, but she knew it wasn't picking up as it should. And ever and again she would have Merton Gill assure her that he hadn't forgotten the home address, the town where lived Gighampton or Gumwash or