runnin' start. He remarks that his father has just made a
killin' in Wall Street that has caused Rockefeller to weep and gnash
his teeth and that the last affair his mother give at Newport got four
columns on the front page, although the mayor of the town had been shot
the same afternoon.

Gladys takes this all in with her mouth as open as Kelly pool and her
eyes half closed and dreamy like she was dyin' happy.

When Harold put on the brakes and eased up, she throwed him a look that
I would have walloped Dempsey for. Harold says he must go, because the
picture would be ruined if he wasn't there to direct it, and Gladys
holds out a tremblin' hand. Then Harold plays his ace--he takes off
his hat, bows, kisses that hand and blows.

When I seen Gladys deliberately walk back of the wrappin' booth, put
her hand to her lips and kiss it herself--I pulled my hat down over my
ears and went back to Film City.

The next mornin' they begin work on the first reel of "The End of the
World," and Harold had a field day at bein' rotten. He got in
everybody's way, ruined twenty feet of film by firin' off a cannon at
the wrong time and made Genaro hysterical by gettin' caught in a papier
mache tower and pullin' it down. Not content with that, he goes back
of a interior to try out one of the Kid's cigarettes and by simply
flickin' the thing into a can of kerosene he set the Maudlin Movin'
Picture Company back about five hundred bucks.

They run him out of the picture, and he went, yellin' that it would be
a farce without him in it.

About four o'clock me and the Kid is trottin' along the road outside of
Film City like we did every day so's Scanlan could keep in condition,
when we all but fell over Harold. He's sittin' on a rock and gazin'
off very sad in the general direction of New York. His dashin',
smashin', soft hat was yanked down over his home-breakin' face, and his
dimpled chin was buried in his lily white hands. He looked like a guy
that has worked twenty-seven years inventin' a new steamboat and then
seen it sink the first time he tried it out.

The Kid runs over and slaps him on the back just hard enough to make
his hat fall off.

"Cheer up, Cutey!" pipes Scanlan. "They can't hang a guy for tryin'!"

Harold retrieves his hat, smoothes it out carefully and lets loose the
gloomiest sigh I ever heard in my life.

"Have you a cigarette?" he asks sadly.

The Kid pulls out a deck, and Harold takes two, droppin' on