"I always supposed that fat men were essentially;sweet-tempered,"she observed to the world in general,when the mutterings ceased for a moment.
"Gee!I'd like to make that,"Pete Lowry said in an undertone to his assistant.
Jean did not know that he referred to herself and the unstudied picture she made,sitting there with her hat pushed back,and the little bird blinking at her from between her cupped palms.But she looked at him curiously,with an impulse to ask questions about what he was doing with that queer-looking camera,and how he could inject motion into photography.While she watched,he drew out a narrow,gray strip of film and made mysterious markings upon it with the pencil,which he afterwards thrust absent-mindedly behind his ear.He closed a small door in the side of the camera,placed his palm over the lens and turned the little crank several times around.Then he looked at Jean,and from her to the director.
Robert Grant Burns gave a sweeping,downward gesture with both hands,--a gesture which his company knew well,--and came toward Jean.
"You may not know it,"he began in a repressed tone,"but we're in a hurry.We've got work to do.
We ain't here on any pleasure excursion,and you'll be doing me a favor by getting out of the scene so we can go on with our work."Jean sat still upon the bench and looked at him.
"I suppose so;but why should I be doing you favors?
You haven't seemed to appreciate them,so far.Of course,I dislike to seem disobliging,or anything like that,but your tone and manner would not make any one very enthusiastic about pleasing you,Mr.Burns.
In fact,I don't see why you aren't apologizing for being here,instead of ordering me about as if I worked for you.This bench--is my bench.This ranch--is where I have lived nearly all my life.I hate to seem vain,Mr.Burns,but at the same time I think it is perfectly lovely of me to explain that I have a right here;and I consider myself an angel of patience and graciousness and many other rare virtues,because Ihave not even hinted that you are once more taking liberties with other people's property."She looked at him with a smile at the corners of her eyes and just easing the firmness of her lips,as if the humor of the situation was beginning to appeal to her.
"If you would stop dancing about,and let your naturally sweet disposition have a chance,and would explain just why you are here and what you want to do,and would ask me nicely,--it might help you more than to get apoplexy over it."The two women exclaimed under their breaths to each other and moved farther away,as if from an impending explosion.The assistant camera man gurgled and turned his back abruptly.Lee Milligan,wandering up from the stables,stopped and stared.No one,within the knowledge of those present,had ever spoken so to Robert Grant Burns;no one had ever dreamed of speaking thus to him.They had seen him when rage had mastered him and for slighter cause;it was not an experience that one would care to repeat.
Robert Grant Burns walked up to Jean as if he meant to lift her from the bench and hurl her by sheer brute force out of his way.He stopped so close to her that his shadow covered her.
"Are you going to get out of the way so we can go on?"he asked,in the tone of one who gives a last merciful chance of escape from impending doom.
"Are you going to explain why you're here,and apologize for your tone and manner,which are extremely rude?"Jean did not pay his rage the compliment of a glance at him.She was looking at the dainty beak of the little brown bird,and was telling herself that she could not be bullied into losing control of herself.These two women should not have the satisfaction of calling her a crude,ignorant,country girl;and Robert Grant Burns should not have the triumph of browbeating her into yielding one inch of ground.
She forced herself to observe the wonderfully delicate feathers on the bird's head.It seemed more content now in the little nest her two palms had made for it.
Its heart did not flutter so much,and she fancied that the tiny,bead-like eyes were softer in their bright regard of her.
Robert Grant Burns came to a pause.Jean sensed that he was waiting for some reply,and she looked up at him.His hand was just reaching out to her shoulder,but it dropped instead to his coat pocket and fumbled for his handkerchief.Her eyes strayed to Pete Lowry.He was looking upward with that measuring glance which belongs to his profession,estimating the length of time the light would be suitable for the scene he had focussed.She followed his glance to where the shadow of the kitchen had crept closer to the bench.
Jean was not stupid,and she had passed through the various stages of the kodak fever;she guessed what was in the mind of the operator,and when she met his eyes full,she smiled at him sympathetically.