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Irish Mary looked like the mother of a girl who was earning five thousand a week. She was marcelled, silk-clad, rustling, gold-meshed, and, oh, how real in spite of it all as she beamed upon the dazzled Harrietta.

“Out with ye!” trumpeted this figure, brushing aside Harrietta’s proffered chair. “There’ll be no stayin’ here for you. You’re coming along with me, then, bag and baggage.” She glanced sharply about. “Where’s your maid, dearie?”

“Disappointed me at the last minute. I’ll have to get someone—-“

“We’ve plenty. You’re coming up to our place.”

“But, Mary, I can’t. I couldn’t. I’m tired. This room—-“

“A hole. Wait till you see The Place. Gardens and breakfast rooms and statues and fountains and them Jap boys runnin’ up and down like mice. We rented it for a year from that Goya Ciro. She’s gone back East. How she ever made good in pictures I don’t know, and her face like a hot-water bag for expression. Lyddy’s going to build next year. They’re drawin’ up the plans now. The Place’ll be nothin’ compared to it when it’s finished. Put on your hat. The boys’ll see to your stuff here.”

“I can’t. I couldn’t. You’re awfully kind, Mary dear—-“

Mary dear was at the telephone. “Mrs. Lissome. That’s who. Send up that Jap boy for the bags.”

Mrs. Lissome’s name and Mrs. Lissome’s commands apparently carried heavily in Hollywood. A uniformed Jap appeared immediately as though summoned by a genie. The bags seemed to spring to him, so quickly was he enveloped by their glittering surfaces. He was off with the burdens, invisible except for his gnomelike face and his sturdy bow legs in their footman’s boots.

“I can’t,” said Harrietta, feebly, for the last time. It was her introduction to the topsy-turvy world into which she had come. She felt herself propelled down the stairs by Irish Mary, who wasn’t Irish Mary any more, but a Force whose orders were obeyed. In the curved drive outside the Hollywood Hotel the little Jap was stowing the last of the bags into the great blue car whose length from nose to tail seemed to span the hotel frontage. At the wheel, rigid, sat a replica of the footman.

Irish Mary with a Japanese chauffeur. Irish Mary with a Japanese footman. Irish Mary with a great glittering car that was as commodious as the average theatre dressing room.

“Get in, dearie. Lyddy’s using the big car to-day. They’re out on location. Shootin’ the last of Devils and Men.”

Harrietta was saying to herself: “Don’t be a nasty snob, Harry. This is a different world. Think of the rotten time Alice would have had in Wonderland if she hadn’t been broad-minded. Take it as it comes.”

Irish Mary was talking as they sped along through the hot white Hollywood sunshine…. “Stay right with us as long as you like, dearie, but if after you’re workin’ you want a place of your own, I know of just the thing you can rent furnished, and a Jap gardener and house man and cook right on the places besides—-“

“But I’m not signed for five thousand a week, like Lydia,” put in Harrietta.

“I know what you’re signed for. ‘Twas me put ’em up to it, an’ who else! ‘Easy money,’ I says, ‘an’ why shouldn’t she be gettin’ some of it?’ Lyddy spoke to Gans about it. What Lyddy says goes. She’s a good girl, Lyddy is, an’ would you believe the money an’ all hasn’t gone to her brains, though what with workin’ like a horse an’ me to steady her, an’ shrewder than the lawyers themself, if I do say it, she ain’t had much chance. And here’s The Place.”

And here was The Place. Sundials, rose gardens, gravel paths, dwarf trees, giant trees, fountains, swimming pools, tennis courts, goldfish, statues, verandas, sleeping porches, awnings, bird baths, pergolas.

Inside more Japs. Maids. Rooms furnished like the interior of movie sets that Harrietta remembered having seen. A bedroom, sitting room, dressing room, and bath all her own in one wing of the great white palace, only one of thousands of great white palaces scattered through the hills of Hollywood. The closet for dresses, silk-lined and scented, could have swallowed whole her New York bedroom.