"Sure they do," replied Eleanor, "lots of them. But that's the hardest way around. Sometimes you work years and don't get half as far as some other girl who's wise enought to cop off a fellow with a big job in the picture business."
"But if you've got talent as an acktress," persisted Minnie, her mind flashing back to the time when her imitations of people on the stage had amused the girls at the Odds and Ends.
"I don't like to seem conceited, but everybody says I'm cut out for the stage, Eleanor. I've acted all over the place ever since I was a kid. Like Mary Pickford," she added. "I was readin' in a movie magazine only the other night how Mary Pickford began her career when she was five years old. She didn't need a pull to get on, did she?"
"Sure she didn't. But how many Mary Pickfords are there? Thousands of girls in the moving picture business—and only one Mary."
"Gee," said Minnie after a long, thoughtful pause. "It sure is different than I thought it would be. In some ways it's a lot nicer. In others it scares me skinny. It's an awful complicated business, ain't it?"
They were standing in a draft which made Eleanor cough, an ugly strangling cough.
"Gee, Eleanor, can't you do something for it?" Minnie asked as her arms held the racking shoulders. "Don't you think it would help if you kept a Smith Brothers in your mouth all the time?"
"It's nothing much," Eleanor reassured her, "but it's rotten to have bronchitis the way I've got it. Lord, it's hot in this place, isn't it? Let's ask Letcher if we haven't time to go to the dressing room."
"Anything your little heart desires," Letcher assured her, after looking around to make sure that Bacon was out of hearing. "I'll run up and call you myself when you're wanted."
