"Oh, but we're glad, Luck Lindsay!" she began in her quick, emphatic way. "We all feel like a million dollars over your good luck. We're going to have fried chicken and strawberry shortcake for supper, too, just for a celebration. I knew you'd come out and tell us all about it. So sit right down, everybody, and keep still so Luck can tell us just what everybody said to the other fellow, and how Dewitt happened to get hold of him so quickly. Is it true? The boys heard you were going to get two hundred dollars a week!" "Not get it--no." Luck unfolded his napkin with fingers that shook a little. "I was offered it, but I'm not going to take it." "Not--why, Luck Lindsay!" Rosemary very nearly dropped her new percolator. "_Y' ain't_?" "Aw, gwan! Only reason I wouldn't take two hundred a week would be because I'd drop dead at the chance and couldn't." "Well, listen. There's one point that hasn't spilled into studio gossip yet," Luck managed to slip into the uproar. "I didn't take the place. There were some details we couldn't get together on, so I thanked him and turned it down." There was silence, while the Happy Family stared at him. "What dee-tails was them?" Big Medicine demanded belligerently. "Way I heard it--" "Studio gossip," Luck interrupted hastily. "You can't depend on anything you hear passed around amongst the extras. We failed to agree on certain technical details. I haven't any more job than a jack rabbit; let it go at that. What have you fellows been doing?" "Us? Why, the Acme's goin' to give us absent, treatment from now on," Andy stated cheerfully. "They're paying us thirty a week apiece to stay away from 'em--and I sure never earned money easier than that. Clements is going to take orders from that so-called author, and he told me straight out that they'll be using actors in those stories." "They'll need 'em," Luck commented drily. "You're in luck that they don't want you to work. Any other news?" "You bet they's other news!" roared Big Medicine, goggling across the table at Luck. "I rustled me a job, by cripes! Soon as this rain's over, I'm goin' to cash in my face fer two dollars a day with the Sunset. Feller over there wants me bad fer atmosphere in a pitcher he's goin' to make of the Figy Islands. Feller claims he can clothe me in a nigger wig and a handful of grass and get more atmosphere, by cripes, to the square inch--" Rosemary gasped and bolted for the kitchen. When she came back, red-faced and still gurgling spasmodically, Pink was relating his experiences with another company. He and the Native Son and Weary, it transpired, were duly enrolled upon the extra list and were reasonably sure of a day's work now and then. Rosemary had paid her Japanese maid and let her go, and Andy was going to help her with the housework until the industrial problem was solved. She listened for a minute and then made a suggestion of her own.