the days ten years ago when she had
begun to mother him along with big Dennis. "I--I sorter--sorter need
her."

Mrs. Farraday looked at them both with a keenness under the affection in
her glance, and then laughed merrily.

"Yes, go with him, Patricia," she commanded. "I have lived through the
week before the presentation of five plays for Van, and I think that it
is only just that you should share that ordeal with me. He's impossible,
and demands--everything. I gave him a perfectly new and wonderful hat
that cost a hundred and ten dollars for the second scene of 'Dear
Geraldine' right off my head at the dress rehearsal, and 'Miss Cut-up'
did her dances on one of my most choice Chinese rugs. Now he's taking
you from me. But go!"

"Here's your wrap, still in the car, so hop in," commanded Mr. Vandeford
hurriedly, as though he feared that Mrs. Farraday would withdraw her
sympathetic permission. "Good-night, and thank you!"

"Good-night, you two--two dear children," returned Mrs. Farraday, as she
saw them off, after tenderly embracing Miss Adair and making plans for
their future meeting. "How _lovely_ it would be!" she murmured to
herself, with a lack of definition, as she went back to the stately
house behind the tree, where windows were beginning to glow.

For a long time the producer and his author were silent.

"I hate it--and I love it," Miss Adair finally said, with her soft,
slurring voice lowered almost to a whisper as Valentine sped them along
the country road perfumed and dusky with the early night, though a
silvery radiance proclaimed a chaperoning moon as imminent.

"That is the proper way for an author to feel about a play one week
before the opening," Mr. Vandeford assured her, with a laugh keyed to
match her declaration. "It shows an entire sympathy with the poor
producer."

"Suppose, just suppose, that the producer had been anybody but you and I
had had to stand all--" Words failed Miss Adair in imaging her plight as
author to another producer than Mr. Vandeford.

"Any other producer might have done better than I have done for you,"
Mr. Vandeford answered her, with a sadness in his voice that he himself
had never heard before. And as he spoke he resolved to tell her the
whole Hawtry situation, which was haunting him day and night; to begin
with the purple, letter-manuscript hunch, which he had lightly taken up
to spank Miss Hawtry for trying to double-cross him with Weiner about
"The Rosie Posie