The girlhood of Bettina--or Betsy--Blythe, had been very different. She was one of a swiftly increasing number of well-born girls whom society had welcomed as débutantes, and who, after a first season, and great amateur success in the Junior League, had calmly informed her family that she had made a contract with some celluloid corporation to appear in moving pictures. New York society was becoming accustomed to this sort of behaviour. It had to be. From the time that the nation’s war-bugles sounded assembly at Armageddon, the younger generation had taken the bit between its firm teeth. Nothing had yet checked them. They still were running away. * * * * * In Annan’s little drawing-room, where coffee had been served, the excited chatter continued to turn around Betsy’s brand new company,--this event being the reason for the dinner. Every capitalist involved was discussed, and pulled to quivering pieces; every officer and director in the _Betsy Blythe Company, Inc._ was dissected under the merciless scrutiny of four young people who already had learned in New York to believe only what happened, and to turn deaf ears to mere words. “Listen, Betsy,” said Rosalind Shore, “Mom says you’re all right with Cairo Cotton and Levant Tobacco behind you.” “The main thing,” remarked Coltfoot, “is to begin in a businesslike way. Don’t start off staggering under a load of overheads, Betsy. Don’t let them take expensive offices. The people who’ll use ’em would have to sit in a Mills Hotel if you didn’t provide a loafing place for them. “And don’t spill money down the coal hole for a plant. When you need a studio, hire it for the length of time you expect to use it. Hire everything. Spend your money on the people who’ll bring it back to you, not on human objects d’art and period furniture.” “I know,” said Betsy, “but I can’t control those things, can I?” Annan said: “Perhaps you can. You know, socially, some of the people who are putting up the money. Harry Sneyd has to account to them. He’s handling you and you can handle him.” “You can see to it,” said Coltfoot, “that Levant Tobacco isn’t used to pension a bunch of bums and dumb-bells. You can see to it that the money is spent where it ought to be spent. Your people have got real money. You can’t buy a good story for nothing; you can’t buy a good director or a good camera-man for nothing. Those are the people to pay.” Rosalind nodded: “And low pedal on art-directors and carpenters,” she added. “I’m not so sure that I need all I get. Scenery is on the toboggan, sister Bettina. You don’t want expensive sets. Neither does your audience. It wants you. And it wants your story. So don’t let your bunch start rebuilding devastated France in your back yard when a corner in a hall bed-room will do.... It will always do if the story and the acting go over. I don’t have to tell you that, either.”