Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Star-dust in Hollywood that made her calves ache. Puffing and blowing, he struggled after her. " Didn't know you were a Marathon racer," he panted at the top. " I told you I was a good walker," said Jo. " Did you think I was bluffing? " He sank on to a stone and mopped his purple neck. A sense of shame, or perhaps the memory of his claim to be a rough-rider, had made him hurry. Jo regarded his scarlet face and protuberant eyes with compunction, but reminded herself of the stories we had heard of real estate swindles and of the knowledge that this one also was, if not fraudulent, at least part of a general misstatement of values. " Now I've seen all I want," she said. " That thousanddollar lot in the corner [the can-dump] attracts me — at least, it attracts our pockets. I'll tell my husband about it." The salesman brightened up. He was now the tortured one and wanted to go home. He drove quickly down the corkscrew road, passing other real estate men still in the toils of persuasion, who looked at the cowboy with raised and inquiring eyebrows. " Soon I shall be home, and that will be that," thought Jo, pressing her throbbing temples. But they stopped once more at the Maori hut. She had not noticed that behind were small offices, and there all the old, tired women had been ranged in a sweltering group under the questionable shelter of a few straggling bamboos. "We all got to wait here," they said, " and one by one folks is taken into that office." " And the Lord help you when you get there," whispered a shrewdfaced woman to me. "High-pressure salesmanship they call it. You'll see." An hour passed. The bamboos gave just enough shade to prevent sunstroke. At last Jo's turn came. She remembered former college triumphs in amateur theatricals and made a [62]