Miss Devine steps deliberately right around the side of the hedge almost into Adams's arms. He's white and lookin' much like he did the first day he blowed into Film City. The minute he sees her he straightens up.
"How long have you been here?" he clips out.
"I've heard--everything!" she says, lookin' him right in the eye.
Adams runs his hand through his hair, and pulls a look that went through me to the bone. I don't know how it hit Miss Devine.
"And all of this--this--your attitude toward me--the accident--was played to make a picture?" he says.
"Yes!" says Miss Devine. "All except _this_!" And I hope I never see another movie, if both her arms didn't go around his neck--right out loud in public, too! "All except _this_!" she repeats. "And, oh, Jack--this is _real_!!"
"I win a thousand bucks!" pants Duke, draggin' me away--De Vronde blew the minute she appeared on the scene--"I win a thousand bucks!" he says. "And the picture is gonna be a riot! If they was only a good camera man here now for that close up at the finish, eh? Still--I guess that would be too raw!" He looks back where Adams and Miss Devine is posin' for a picture of still life. "And she said this love stuff was the bunk!" he hollers. "Oh, boy!!!!"
Every time I see a thermometer, a watch, and a egg my temperature aviates to about a hundred and ninety-eight in the shade--and if they's nobody lookin' I bust 'em! I spent two months and eight hundred bucks with that layout once and, oh, lady!--Say! The next time I feel a vacation comin' on, I'm goin' to Russia and holler, "Hooray for the Czar!"
I just been Red-Crossed to within a inch of my life and I'm off that "take-two-once-every-twice, and don't-eat-any-this-or-drink-any-that" stuff! The right cross and the double cross has been little pals of mine for years, and I once got throwed out of school for pullin' that "How to make a maltese cross" thing, but the _red_ one was all new to me up to last month.
They call me a glutton for punishment, but I got--enough!
I can't go in a drug store no more, because the sight of the prescription bar in the rear affects me like strong drink and I even had to lay off peas, because they look like pills.
All the food I got durin' the time I become a victim of the Red Cross could have been carried over the Rocky Mountains by a lame ant, and I got a hole in my wrist that can be used as a ash tray from doctors grabbin' it to give my pulse early mornin' workouts and clockin' it over the full course. I was allowed two kinds of milk to drink--hot and cold. The only thing I could get to read was wrote to order on the premises and was all on the same subject, "Shake well before using!"
