f three successive stage-carpenters.

"Real eats, Mr. Vandeford?" the former had inquired one morning.

"Brown-bread turkey, nice and tasty, good crackers, but soda-pop and so
forth for booze. Remember, they've got to face it, we hope, many weeks;
don't turn their stomachs so they'll all gag."

"I see, sir, I see. I fed 'Maple Leaves' for two years, and they all et
every night and gimme a purse when it closed to go to London."

"Goes!"

"Brown-bread turkey sounds nice. I'm hungry," said Miss Adair, as the
good-providing property-man departed.

"Pop is going to bring us a piece of pie and a bottle of milk from the
automat," answered Mr. Vandeford, as he began putting busy stabs with
the press pencil on a pile of papers. "I ought to send him to get Denny
to motor you for a real feed in the cool somewhere, but I want you
here." With perfect unconcern, he went on checking the list the
property-man had left him. He had ceased trying to decide the meaning of
the flutter which he was not sure Miss Adair really gave when she was
pleased. He was too busy to think about anything but the rush and roar
of the machinery of "The Purple Slipper," so he just kept Miss Adair so
near him for all the waking hours of the day that he could have no
occasion to have his thoughts distracted by worrying over just what
might be befalling her. Day after day he extracted her from the Y. W. C.
A. at ten o'clock A. M., fed her and Miss Lindsey coffee and rolls and
berries just any place that they happened to see (often he even ate with
the two girls in the big empty cafeteria at the institution), lunched
with her in the same haphazard fashion, sought a cool and quiet spot to
give her dinner, and a ride on a country road, turned her into the big
safety at about eleven o'clock, and went to bed to sleep the sleep of
the interestedly absorbed.

The few evenings that Miss Adair spent with Mr. Gerald Height Mr.
Vandeford did not find repose so early or with such ease. Also, his
awakening on those mornings after was not so joyous, and he arrived at
the Y. W. C. A. fifteen and twenty minutes too early upon each occasion.

However, his time was well spent in chatting with the brisk young
secretary, and his anxiety was entirely relieved each time by finding
the look intact in the gray eyes raised to his in eager greeting after
the prolonged absence of fourteen hours, when the usual separation was
about ten.

"We went out to a place called the Beach