n his long fingers through it and extracted a card. He
glanced at it, and then, the frown deepening, read it aloud.

"'Michelin, Gelda. Telephone Bryant 4759. Brunette. Medium build.
Good neck and eyes. Good figure. Good clothes.'"

He glanced up. "Well?"

"That's me," said Miss Michelin calmly. "I've got the same
telephone number and eyes and neck and clothes. Of course my hair
is different and I am thinner, but that's business. I'd like to
know what chance a fat girl would have in the chorus these days."

Von Herman groaned. "I'll pay you for the time you've waited and
for your trouble. Can't use you for these pictures." Then as she
left he turned a comically despairing face to the two men at the
drawing boards. "What are we going to do? We've got to make a
start on these pictures and everything has gone wrong. They want
something special. Two figures, young man and woman. Said
expressly they didn't want a chicken. No romping curls and none of
that eyes and lips fool-girl stuff. This chap's ideal for the
man." He pointed to Jock.

Jock had been staring, fascinated, at the shaded, zigzag marks
which the artist--dark-skinned, velvet-eyed, foreign-looking
youth--was making on the sheet of paper before him. He had
scarcely glanced up during the entire scene. Now he looked briefly
and coolly at Jock.

"Where did you get him?" he asked, with the precise enunciation of
the foreign-born. "Good figure. And he wears his clothes not like
a cab driver, as the others do."

"Thanks," drawled Jock, flushing a little. Then, boyish curiosity
getting the better of him, "Say, tell me, what in the world are
you doing to that drawing?"

He of the velvety eyes smiled a twisted little smile. His slim
brown fingers never stopped in their work of guiding the pen in
its zigzag path.

"It is work," he sneered, "to delight the soul of an artist. I am
now engaged in the pleasing task of putting the bones in a
herringbone suit."

But Jock did not smile. Here was another man, he thought, who had
been given a broom and told to sweep down the stairway.

Von Herman was regarding him almost wistfully. "I hate to let you
slip," he said. Then, his face brightening, "By Jove! I wonder if
Miss Galt would pose for us if we told her what a fix we were in."

He picked up the telephone receiver. "Miss Galt, please," he said.
Then, aside, "Of course it's nerve to ask a girl who's earning
three thousand a year to leave her desk and come up and p