ed, somehow, to get the part of Betty in the screen version
of The Magician, probably because she struck the director as being the
type; or perhaps her gift of mimicry had something to do with it, and
the youth glow that was in her face. At any rate, when the picture was
finished and released, no one was more surprised than Lyddy at the
result. They offered her three thousand a week on a three-year contract.
She wired her mother, but Irish Mary wired back: "I don't believe a word
of it hold out for five am coming." She left for the Coast.
Incidentally, she got the five for Lyddy. Lyddy signed her name to the
contract--Lydia Lissome--in a hand that would have done discredit to an
eleven-year-old.

Harrietta told Ken about it, not without some bitterness: "Which only
proves one can't be too careful about picking one's parents. If my
father had been a hod carrier instead of a minister of the Gospel and a
darling old dreamer, I'd be earning five thousand a week, too."

They were dining together in Harrietta's little sitting room so high up
and quiet and bright with its cream enamel and its log fire. Almost one
entire wall of that room was window, facing south, and framing such an
Arabian Nights panorama as only a New York eleventh-story window, facing
south, can offer.

Ken lifted his right eyebrow, which was a way he had when being
quizzical. "What would you do with five thousand a week, just
supposing?"

"I'd do all the vulgar things that other people do who have five
thousand a week."

"You wouldn't enjoy them. You don't care for small dogs or paradise
aigrettes or Italian villas in Connecticut or diamond-studded cigarette
holders or plush limousines or butlers." He glanced comprehensively
about the little room--at the baby grand whose top was pleasantly
littered with photographs and bonbon dishes and flower vases; at the
smart little fire snapping in the grate; at the cheerful reds and blues
and ochres and sombre blues and purples and greens of the books in the
open bookshelves; at the squat clock on the mantelshelf; at the gorgeous
splashes of black and gold glimpsed through the many-paned window.
"You've got everything you really want right here"--his gesture seemed,
somehow, to include himself--"if you only knew it."

"You talk," snapped Harrietta, "as the Rev. H. John Scoville used to."
She had never said a thing like that before. "I'm sick of what they
call being true to my art. I'm tired of having last year