There was a fireplace in that bungalow, and a fairly large living-room surrounding the fireplace.  The Happy Family extravagantly indulged themselves in wood, even at the unbelievable price they must pay for it; and after supper they would light the fire and hunt up chairs enough, and roll cigarettes, and talk themselves quite away from the present and into the past of glowing memory.

The horses they rode—­before that fireplace—­would have made any Frontier Day celebration famous enough to be mentioned in the next encyclopedia published.  The herds they took through hard winters and summer droughts would have made them millionaires all, if they could only have turned them into flesh-and-blood animals.  They talked of blizzards and of high water and of short grass and of thunderstorms.  They added little touches to the big range picture Luck had planned to make.  Starting off suddenly in this wise:  “Say, Luck, why don’t you have—?” and the fires of enthusiasm would flare again in Luck’s eyes, and the talk would grow eager.

But—­and here was the key to the remarkable interpretation which Luck permitted the Happy Family to give the Bently Brown stories—­some time before the evening was too old, Luck would swing the talk around to the work they were doing.  He would pull a Bently Brown scenario from his pocket and read, with much sarcastic comment, the scenes they were later to enact.  He would incite the Happy Family to poking fun at such lurid performances as Bently Brown described in all seriousness and in detail.  He would encourage comment and argument and the play of their caustic imaginations upon the action of the story.  He would gradually make them see the whole thing in the light of a huge joke; he would, without saying much himself, bring the Happy Family into the mood of wanting to make Bently Brown appear ridiculous to all beholders.

Is it any wonder, then, if the camera man and the assistants should exchange puzzled glances when Luck put the Happy Family through their scenes?  Exits and entrances, the essential details of the action, Luck directed painstakingly, as always he had done.  Why, then, said camera man to assistants, should he let those fellows go in and ball up the dramatic business and turn whole scenes into farce with their foolery?  And why had he chosen Tracy Gray Joyce as leading man?  And that eye-rolling, limp sentimentalist, Lenore Honiwell, as his leading woman?  Luck was known to despise these two, personally and professionally.  They could not, to save their lives, get through a dramatic scene together without giving the observers a sickish feeling.  To see Tracy Gray Joyce lay his hand upon the left side of his cravat and cast his eyes upward always made Luck shiver; yet Tracy Gray Joyce would he have for leading man, and none other.  To see Lenore Honiwell throw back her head, close her eyes, and heave one of those terrific motion-picture sighs always made the camera man snort; yet Luck, who before had considered her scarcely worth a civil bow when he met her, had actually coaxed her away from a director who really admired her style of acting.