ing it! And don't
ye ever give up writing poetry; it's a beautiful pastime for any man
by that name. But what--what, in the name of Saint Columkill, ever
happened to Billy Burgeman!"

"Billy Burgeman? Why, he came down on the train with me and went back
to Arden."

Patsy threw back her head and laughed--laughed until she almost
feared she could not stop laughing. And then she suddenly became
conscious of the pompous manager standing beside her, a yellow sheet
of paper in his hand.

"Will you kindly explain what this means?" and he slapped the paper
viciously.

"I'll try to," said Patsy; "but will you tell me just one thing
first? How far is it to Arden?"

"Arden? It's seven miles to Arden. But what's that got to do with
this? This is a wire from Miss St. Regis, saying she is ill and will
be unable to fill her engagement here to-night! Now, who are you?"

"I? Why, I'm her understudy, of course--and--I'm--so happy--"
Whereupon Patricia O'Connell, late of the Irish National Players and
later of the women's free ward of the City Hospital, crumpled up on
the veranda floor in a dead faint.

V

A TINKER POINTS THE ROAD

The Brambleside Inn lost one of its guests at an inconceivably early
hour the morning after Patsy O'Connell unexpectedly filled Miss St.
Regis's engagement there. The guest departed by way of the
second-floor piazza and a fire-escape, and not even the night
watchman saw her go. But it was not until she had put a mile or more
of open country between herself and the Inn that Patsy indulged in
the freedom of a long breath.

"After this I'll keep away from inns and such like; 'tis too
wit-racking to make it anyways comfortable. I feel now as if I'd been
caught lifting the crown jewels, instead of giving a hundred-guinea
performance for the price of a night's bed and board and coming away
as poor as a tinker's ass."

A smile caught at the corners of her mouth--a twitching, memory
smile. She was thinking of the note she had left folded in with the
green-and-gold gown in Miriam St. Regis's trunk. In it she had
stated her payment of one Irish grandfather by the name of Denis--in
return for the loan of the dress--and had hoped that Miriam would
find him handy on future public occasions. Patsy could not forbear
chuckling outright--the picture of anything so unmitigatedly British
as Miriam St. Regis with an Irish ancestor trailing after her for the
rest of her career was too entrancing.

An earl