“I don’t guess you’re crazy to work under Bently Brown,” he finally managed to slide into the uproar.  “Do I get you as meaning to stick with me—­wherever I go?”

“You get us that way or you get licked,” Weary, the mild-tempered one, stated flatly.  “You can fire us and send us home, but you can’t walk off and leave us with the Acme, ’cause we won’t stay.”

That was what Luck had ridden twelve cold, rainy miles to hear the Happy Family declare.  He had expected them to take that stand, but it was good to hear it spoken in just that tone of finality.  He stacked his cup and saucer in his plate, laid his knife and fork across them in the old range style, and began to roll a cigarette,—­smoking at the table being another comfortable little bad habit which Rosemary Green wisely and smilingly permitted.

“That being the case,” he began cheerfully, “you boys had best go over with me now and give in your two weeks’ notice.  I’m director of our company till I quit—­see?  I’ll arrange for your transportation home—­”

“Aw, gwan!  Who said we was goin’ home?” wailed Happy Jack distressfully.

“Now, listen!  You’re entitled to your transportation money.  That doesn’t mean you’ll have to use it for that purpose—­sabe?  It’s coming to you, and you get it.  There’s a week’s salary due all around, too, besides the two weeks you’ll get by giving notice.  No use passing up any bets like that.  So let’s go, boys.  I’ve got an appointment at one o’clock, and I may as well wipe the Acme slate clean this forenoon, so I can talk business without any come-back from Mart, or any tag ends to pick up.  Grab your slickers and let’s move.”

That was a busy day for Luck Lindsay, in spite of the fact that it was a stormy one.  His interview with Mart, which he endured mostly for the sake of the Happy Family, developed into a quarrel which severed beyond mending his connection with the Acme.

It was noon when he reached his hotel, and his wrath had not cooled with the trip into town.  There were two ’phone calls in his mail, he discovered, and one bore an urgent request that he call Hollywood something-or-other the moment he returned.  This was from the Great Western Film Company, and Luck’s eyes brightened while he read it.  He went straight to his room and called up the Great Western.

Presently he found himself speaking to the great Dewitt himself, and his blood was racing with the possibilities of the interview.  Dewitt had heard that Luck was leaving the Acme—­extras may be depended upon for carrying gossip from one studio to another,—­and was wasting no time in offering him a position.  His Western director, Robert Grant Burns whom Luck knew well, had been carried to the hospital with typhoid fever which he had contracted while out with his company in what is known as Nigger Sloughs,—­a locality more picturesque than healthful.  Dewitt feared that it was going to be a long illness at the very