s," I says, when I thought it was safe
to look up, "and we'll talk it over."

"Yeh!" chimes in the Kid. "Over a tray of private stock!" He laughs
and slaps alias Van Ness on the shoulder. "Cheer up! Foolish Fink,
will you have a little drink? Woof, woof! I'm a poet!"

"Thanks!" says Van Ness. "But I'm on the wagon. I stopped drinking
five years ago, because under the influence of alcohol I've been known
to act the fool!"

"You ain't the only one!" says the Kid. "Anyhow I never touch it
myself and Johnny here only uses it on his hair! But come on over--you
can have your pants pressed or take a shine, I'm gonna buy, and you
might as well get in on it. Bill's got a laughin' hyena in a cage
outside, and maybe you could get him to rehearse you!"

About a week after that, the society bunch in Frisco comes over to Film
City to act in a picture for the benefit of the electric fan fund for
Greenland, or somethin' like that. About fifty of the future
corespondents, known to the trade as the younger set, blows over in
charge of a dame who had passed her thirty-sixth birth and bust day
when Napoleon was a big leaguer. She had did well by herself though
and when dressed for the street, they was harder things to look at than
her. Also, when her last husband died, he left her a bankroll that
when marked in figures on paper looked like it was the number of
Southerners below Washington. A little bit of a guy, which turned
around when you yelled "G. Herbert Gale" at him, breezed over with her
and at first I had him figured as a detective seekin' divorce evidence,
because he stuck to that dame like a cheap vaudeville act does to the
American flag. He trailed a few paces behind her everywhere she went,
callin' her "Mrs. Roberts-Miller" in public and "Helen Dear" when he
figured nobody was listenin'. It was easy to see that he had crashed
madly in love with this charmer, but as far as she was concerned they
was nothin' stirrin'.

Except that G. Herbert was inclined to be a simp, he wasn't a bad guy
at that. He mixed well and bought freely, although he was riveted to
the water wagon himself. He bragged to me in fact that the nearest he
ever come to alcohol in his life was once when he used it to clean his
diamonds.

But G. Herbert was the guy that invented the ancient and honorable
order of village cut-ups. I never asked him what the G stood for in
his name, I guessed it the first day he was in our midst. It meant