When she felt bewildered,Jean had the trick of appearing merely reserved;and that is what saved her from the charge of rusticity when Robert Grant Burns led her through the station gateway and into a small reception.No less a man than Dewitt,President of the Great Western Film Company,clasped her hand and held it,while he said how glad he was to welcome her.Jean,unawed by his greatness and the honor he was paying her,looked up at him with that distracting little beginning of a smile,and replied with that even-more distracting little drawl in her voice,and wondered why Mrs.Gay should become so plainly flustered all at once.
Dewitt took her by the arm,introduced her to a curious-eyed group with a warming cordiality of manner,and led her away through a crowd that stared and whispered,and up to a great,beautiful,purple machine with a colored chauffeur in dust-colored uniform.Dewitt was talking easily of trivial things,and shooting a question now and then over his shoulder at Robert Grant Burns,who had shed much of his importance and seemed indefinably subservient toward Mr.Dewitt.Jean turned toward him abruptly.
"Where's Lite?Did you send some one to help him with Pard?"she asked with real concern in her voice.
"Those three horses aren't used to towns the size of this,Mr.Burns.Lite is going to have his hands full with Pard.If you will excuse me,Mr.Dewitt,I think I'll go and see how he's making out."Mr.Dewitt glanced over her head and met the delighted grin of Jim Gates,the publicity manager.The grin said that Jean was "running true to form,"which was a pet simile with Jim Gates,and usually accompanied that particular kind of grin.There would be an interesting half column in the next day's papers about Jean's arrival and her deep concern for Lite and her wonderful horse Pard,but of course she did not know that.
"I've got men here to help with the horses,"Mr.
Dewitt assured her,while he gently urged her into the machine."They'll be brought right out to the studio.
I'm taking you home with me in obedience to my wife's,orders.She is anxious to meet the young woman who can out-ride and out-shoot any man on the screen,and can still be sweet and feminine and lovable.I'm quoting my wife,you see,though I won't say those are not my sentiments also.""Your poor wife is going to receive a shock,"said Jean in an unimpressed tone."But it's dear of her to want to meet me."Back of her speech was an irritated impatience that she should be gobbled and carried off like this,when she was sure that she ought to be helping Lite get that fool Pard unloaded and safely through the clang and clatter of the down-town district.
Robert Grant Burns,half facing her on a folding seat,sent her a queer,puzzled glance from under his eyebrows.Four months had Jean been working under his direction;four months had he studied her,and still she puzzled him.She was not ignorant--the girl had been out among civilized folks and had learned town ways;she was not stupid--she could keep him guessing,and he thought he knew all the quirks of human nature,too.
Then why,in the name of common sense,did she take Dewitt and his patronage in this matter-of-fact way,as if it were his everyday business to meet strange employees and take them home to his wife?He glanced at Dewitt and caught a twinkle of perfect understanding in the bright blue eyes of his chief.Burns made a sound between a grunt and a chuckle,and turned his eyes away immediately;but Dewitt chose to make speech upon the subject.
"You haven't spoiled our new leading woman--yet,"he observed idly.
"Oh,but he has,"Jean dissented."He has got me trained so that when he says smile,my mouth stretches itself automatically.When he says sob,I sob.He just snaps his fingers,Mr.Dewitt,and I sit up and go through my tricks very nicely.You ought to see how nicely I do them."Mr.Dewitt put up a hand and pulled at his close-cropped,white mustache that could not hide the twitching of his lips."I have seen,"he said drily,and leaned forward for a word with the liveried chauffeur.
"Turn up on Broadway and stop at the Victoria,"he said,and the chin of the driver dropped an inch to prove he heard.
Dewitt laid his fingers on Jean's arm to catch her attention."Do you see that picture on the billboard over there?"he asked,with a special inflection in his nice,crisp voice."Does it look familiar to you?"Jean looked,and pinched her brows together.Just at first she did not comprehend.There was her name in fancy letters two feet high:"JEAN,OF THE LAZYA."It blared at the passer-by,but it did not look familiar at all.Beneath was a high-colored poster of a girl on a horse.The horse was standing on its hind feet,pawing the air;its nostrils flared red;its tail swept like a willow plume behind.The machine slowed and stopped for the traffic signal at the crossing,and still Jean studied the poster.It certainly did not look in the least familiar.
"Is that supposed to be me,on that plum-colored horse?"she drawled,when they slid out slowly in the wake of a great truck.
"Why,don't you like it?"Dewitt looked at Jim Gates,who was again grinning delightedly and surreptitiously scribbling something on the margin of a folded paper he was carrying.
Jean turned upon him a mildly resentful glance.
"No,I don't.Pard is not purple;he's brown.And he's got the dearest white hoofs and a white sock on his left hind foot;and he doesn't snort fire and brimstone,either."She glanced anxiously at the jam of wagons and automobiles and clanging street-cars."I don't know,though,"she amended ruefully,"I think perhaps he will,too,when he sees all this.I really ought to have stayed with him.""You don't think Lite quite capable of taking care of him.""Oh,yes,of course he is!But I just feel that way."Dewitt shifted a little,so that he was half facing her,and could look at her without having to turn his head.
