amy look came into Nelly's eyes. There had not been an hour since
their parting when she had not thought of that immaculate sportsman.
It would have amazed Freddie, could he have known, but to Nelly Bryant
he was the one perfect man in an imperfect world.

"Do I!" she sighed ecstatically.

Mr. Brown shot a keen glance at her.

"Aha!" he cried facetiously. "Who is he, Nelly? Who is this blue-eyed
boy?"

"If you want to know," said Nelly, defiance in her tone, "he's the
fellow who gave me fifty pounds, with no strings tied to it--get
that!--when I was broke in London! If it hadn't been for him, I'd be
there still."

"Did he?" cried Jill. "Freddie!"

"Yes. Oh, Gee!" Nelly sighed once more. "I suppose I'll never see him
again in this world."

"Introduce me to him, if you do," said Mr. Brown. "He sounds just the
sort of little pal I'd like to have!"

"You remember hearing Freddie say something about losing money in a
slump on the Stock Exchange," proceeded Jill. "Well, that was how I
lost mine. It's a long story, and it's not worth talking about, but
that's how things stand, and I've got to find work of some sort, and
it looks to me as if I should have a better chance of finding it on
the stage than anywhere else."

"I'm terribly sorry."

"Oh, it's all right. How much would these people Goble and Cohn give
me if I got an engagement?"

"Only forty a week."

"Forty dollars a week! It's wealth! Where are they?"

"Over at the Gotham Theatre in Forty-second Street."

"I'll go there at once."

"But you'll hate it. You don't realize what it's like. You wait hours
and hours and nobody sees you."

"Why shouldn't I walk straight in and say that I've come for work?"

Nelly's big eyes grew bigger.

"But you couldn't!'

"Why not?"

"Why, you couldn't!"

"I don't see why."

Mr. Brown intervened with decision.

"You're dead right," he said to Jill approvingly. "If you ask me,
that's the only sensible thing to do. Where's the sense of hanging
around and getting stalled? Managers are human guys, some of 'em.
Probably, if you were to try it, they'd appreciate a bit of gall. It
would show 'em you'd got pep. You go down there and try walking
straight in. They can't eat you. It makes me sick when I see all those
poor devils hanging about outside these offices, waiting to get
noticed and nobody ever paying any attention to them. You push the
office-boy in the face if he tries to stop you, and go in and make 'em
t