r. Rooney. Then the humanity came back into his face and voice as he
spoke to his friends in an undertone.

"Rooney is the genius among stage-directors, but he's the original and
genuine Tartar. How are you both?" As he asked the question he held out
a hand to each of them, and his smile held the cordiality to which they
were both accustomed.

"We had a blow-out on Riverside Drive, and that's what makes us late.
Now I've got to take the car around to the garage," Mr. Farraday
apologized, as he rumpled his leonine mane, fanned himself with his hat,
and departed.

Miss Adair fairly clung to the hand of friendship offered her, with
relief that it had not been withdrawn forever, as she had feared from
the coolness of Mr. Vandeford's greeting before the assembled company of
"The Purple Slipper."

"I'm afraid," she murmured with both alarm and amusement sparkling in
her gray eyes, in which Mr. Vandeford found himself searching for a
certain expression with the eagerness with which he always looked for it
after even a brief separation from his author. It was there and
undimmed. "Let's go sit down where he told us to," Miss Adair
whispered.

"Good girl!" laughed Mr. Vandeford as he led the way to the left
stage-box to which Mr. Rooney had summarily banished the author and the
angel. He seated Miss Adair at the front edge of the box and took the
chair close at her left. She was thus bulwarked and buttressed for any
assault that might be hurled her way. It came in a very few minutes.

Miss Bebe Herne and Miss Mildred Lindsey were in the midst of reading an
animated dialogue on page five by the time Miss Adair's attention was
firmly riveted on the stage and the reading in progress. Fortunately the
little scene was of her own writing. Mr. Vandeford had put it back into
the play instead of the paraphrase Mr. Howard had made of it, and he was
surprised to find how deeply grateful he was to himself for having given
her this bit as he watched the home-made color rise under the gray eyes
as the author sat and heard her written words come to life in a little
bit of really sparkling character comedy, which both Miss Lindsey and
experienced Bebe were acting as well as reading in such a way as to
bring out all the charm of the lines. The happiness of both author and
producer lasted about two minutes, then it was broken into by Mr.
William Rooney with a crash.

"Nuff, there, nuff!" he commanded, in the midst of a quaint epigram,
whi