his way.

"Oh, Mr. Vandeford, how glad I am that you got here before we went out
to the museum," exclaimed a fluty, slurring young voice just behind him,
and he found that the gray eyes with the black lashes were just as
unusual as he had decided they could not possibly be in the interval
that had elapsed since he had looked into them. "Oh, how lovely!"

The last exclamation was made over the edge of the bouquet, which he had
tendered Miss Adair as silently as a school-boy hands out his first
bunch of buttercups to the lady for whom he has picked them.

"Did you come for me to go to help work on the play?" was the energetic
question that brought him out of his trance.

"No, not right now," he answered haltingly, and when he realized how
many times he would have to put her off with words to that same effect,
his trance became a panic.

"When are you going to need me?" Miss Adair asked him with a direct and
business-like look right to his eyes. "I am ready for work now."

"Now what'll I do?" he demanded of himself.

CHAPTER IV

"I thought of a lot of new things for my characters to say, while I was
coming up from Kentucky on the train, and I want to put them in." Miss
Adair further tortured Vandeford.

"This morning I am going to talk to the electrician and the costumer and
the scene painter." Mr. Vandeford answered by telling her the truth,
because, with her very beautiful and candid eyes beaming into his,
showing both interest and consideration, he had not the power to make up
any kind of lie to put her off the trail of "The Purple Slipper."

"I am so glad that I got up early and am ready to go with you! I can
tell them about what my great-grandmother really wore when it all
happened, and it will be such a help to them!" Miss Adair exclaimed
with great business acumen shining in her eyes. Mr. Vandeford gave up
the fight, piloted her into his car, and gave the command, "Office!" to
the very decorous, but very much interested Valentine.

As they were skimming back up the avenue and about to turn into
Forty-second Street, an inspiration came to Mr. Vandeford.

"Didn't you keep some of those costumes of the period of the play hid
away in an old brass-nailed leather trunk in your garret?" he asked Miss
Adair, with desperate eagerness shining in his eyes.

"Yes," Miss Adair answered readily. Then she hesitated, and the genuine
blush rivaled the one in the northeast corner of the bouquet at the
waist of