Personality Plus | Page 6

sack. You see them
worn by clergymen with unsecular ideas in dress, and by the leader of
the counterfeiters' gang in the moving pictures. The pose was that met
with in the backs of magazines--the head lifted, eyes fixed on an
interesting object unseen, one arm crooked to hold a cane, one foot
advanced, the other trailing slightly to give a Fifth Avenue four o'clock
air. His face was expressionless. On his head was a sadly unironed silk
hat.
Von Herman glanced at the drawing tacked to the board of one of the
men. "That'll do, Flynn," he said to the model. He glanced again at the
drawing. "Bring out the hat a little more, Mack. They won't burnish it if
you don't,"--to the artist. Then, turning about, "Where's that girl?"
From a far corner, sheltered by long green curtains, stepped a graceful
almost childishly slim figure in a bronze-green Norfolk suit and
close-fitting hat from beneath which curled a fluff of bright golden hair.
Von Herman stared at her.
"You're not the girl," he said. "You won't do."
"You sent for me," retorted the girl. "I'm Miss Michelin--Gelda
Michelin. I posed for you six months ago, but I've been out of town
with the show since then."
Von Herman, frowning, opened a table drawer, pulled out a card index,
ran his long fingers through it and extracted a card. He glanced at it,
and then, the frown deepening, read it aloud.
"'Michelin, Gelda. Telephone Bryant 4759. Brunette. Medium build.
Good neck and eyes. Good figure. Good clothes.'"

He glanced up. "Well?"
"That's me," said Miss Michelin calmly. "I've got the same telephone
number and eyes and neck and clothes. Of course my hair is different
and I am thinner, but that's business. I'd like to know what chance a fat
girl would have in the chorus these days."
Von Herman groaned. "I'll pay you for the time you've waited and for
your trouble. Can't use you for these pictures." Then as she left he
turned a comically despairing face to the two men at the drawing
boards. "What are we going to do? We've got to make a start on these
pictures and everything has gone wrong. They want something special.
Two figures, young man and woman. Said expressly they didn't want a
chicken. No romping curls and none of that eyes and lips fool-girl stuff.
This chap's ideal for the man." He pointed to Jock.
Jock had been staring, fascinated, at the shaded, zigzag marks which
the artist--dark-skinned, velvet-eyed, foreign-looking youth--was
making on the sheet of paper before him. He had scarcely glanced up
during the entire scene. Now he looked briefly and coolly at Jock.
"Where did you get him?" he asked, with the precise enunciation of the
foreign-born. "Good figure. And he wears his clothes not like a cab
driver, as the others do."
"Thanks," drawled Jock, flushing a little. Then, boyish curiosity getting
the better of him, "Say, tell me, what in the world are you doing to that
drawing?"
He of the velvety eyes smiled a twisted little smile. His slim brown
fingers never stopped in their work of guiding the pen in its zigzag
path.
"It is work," he sneered, "to delight the soul of an artist. I am now
engaged in the pleasing task of putting the bones in a herringbone suit."
But Jock did not smile. Here was another man, he thought, who had
been given a broom and told to sweep down the stairway.

Von Herman was regarding him almost wistfully. "I hate to let you
slip," he said. Then, his face brightening, "By Jove! I wonder if Miss
Galt would pose for us if we told her what a fix we were in."
He picked up the telephone receiver. "Miss Galt, please," he said. Then,
aside, "Of course it's nerve to ask a girl who's earning three thousand a
year to leave her desk and come up and pose for--Hello! Miss Galt?"
Jock, seated on the edge of the models' platform, was beginning to
enjoy himself. Even this end of the advertising business had its
interesting side, he thought. Ten minutes later he knew it had.
Ten minutes later there appeared Miss Galt. Jock left off swinging his
legs from the platform and stood up. Miss Galt was that kind of girl.
Smooth black hair parted and coiled low as only an exquisitely shaped
head can dare to wear its glory-crown. A face whose expression was
sweetly serious in spite of its youth. A girl whose clothes were the sort
of clothes that girls ought to wear in offices, and don't.
"This is mighty good of you, Miss Galt," began Von Herman. "It's the
Kool Komfort Klothes Company's summer campaign stuff. We'll only
need you for an hour or so--to get