lp me. I'll go to bed with my clothes on if she
doesn't," Miss Adair gasped between yawns, and fluttered to Mr.
Vandeford with a frank intention of gaining support.

"Back to the hotel, boy, and go a good pace. Double tip," commanded Mr.
Vandeford to their propelling Italian youth, with an alarm which puzzled
him as much as it would have puzzled many of his friends, while he
accorded his exhausted author the amount of support needed for the
occasion--and no more.

And as Mr. Rooney had hoped, the entire cast of "The Purple Slipper"
slept into the afternoon of the dress-rehearsal day in the complete
collapse which the sea air induced, and they were in a good condition
for restringing. In fact, some of them began that process for themselves
by an afternoon plunge in the ocean.

One of those plunges had an after-effect on the fate of "The Purple
Slipper" further than keying up Mr. Gerald Height for his dress
rehearsals. When he discovered, while detaining Miss Adair for a chat
after his late luncheon, that the author had never beheld the sea before
in all her inland existence, and had never been in it, he insisted on
procuring a bathing-suit and initiating her into that sport. She
assented to the proposition with the greatest eagerness, and in less
than half an hour she had trusted herself to the arms of Mr. Gerald
Height and the Atlantic Ocean. They were both rough in their handling,
and finally she came to resent the boldness of the former as much as she
enjoyed that of the latter. With crimson in her cheeks and lightning in
her eyes, she first attempted to drown them both, then waded to shore,
sat down on the sand, and said things to Mr. Gerald Height, which had
the magic effect of making him unburden himself and his lizard-like
career to her in its entirety.

"You see, I didn't know what a girl who--who wrote your play was like
exactly, and because I couldn't find out I have kept on trying.
Now--now, by George, I know," he said, with a boyishness coming into his
murky eyes. "Say, you know my mother was a Kentucky girl, and I guess
that is one reason I have stuck by this fool--this 'Purple Slipper.'
That and wanting to chase you down."

"Well, now that you've 'chased me down' and found that I'm not--not
there, you'll stay by me and 'The Purple Slipper,' won't you?" Miss
Adair asked, and then like two merry children they both laughed at her
jumble.

"I will," answered Mr. Height, with the queer attachment in his h