er' that I am entirely dissatisfied with the way the play
proves up at dress rehearsal and refuse to open in it. As I am under no
contract to him since Saturday night, I am motoring back to New York
to-night to begin rehearsals to-morrow in 'The Rosie Posie Girl' for Mr.
Weiner. Good-night!" With a stately curtsy to the assembled principals
of "The Purple Slipper," very dramatic in execution, the Violet bowed
herself away from them forever. Ten minutes after she was on her way
back to Manhattan in a big touring-car provided by the hotel management
per a telephone order from Mr. Weiner of New York.

"And Van sold 'The Rosie Posie Girl,' for her opening on Broadway in the
New Carnival Theater with 'The Purple Slipper,'" Mr. Farraday gasped as
he sat down suddenly on one of the benches in the dim little arbor.

"Lord, what a lose, both shows and maybe--maybe Miss Adair, too," Mr.
Gerald Height exclaimed, and there were both sympathy and anxiety in his
voice.

"Oh, I don't know," said Mr. Rooney, as he rolled his fat cigar from the
left of his mouth to the right and spat into the vines. "I've made a
pretty good play out of 'The Purple Slipper.' It will go all right
without her. Actors aren't so much. It's the situation and the
stage-managing."

"That's what you think," jeered Mr. Gerald Height, gloomily. "I always
had a hunch that I would never play wig and ruffles."

"Can that hunch," commanded Mr. Rooney. "I'm going to put Miss Lindsey
in the part and play it refined for a winner. Been understudying Miss
Hawtry, haven't you, Miss Lindsey?"

"Yes," answered Miss Lindsey, and a sudden radiance shone from her dark,
intellectual face that lit up the whole arbor and lighted a flame in the
creative hearts of both Mr. Gerald Height and Mr. William Rooney. And
what it lighted in the hearts of both of those gentlemen was nothing to
the blaze it fanned in the heart of Mr. Dennis Farraday, where it had
been smouldering along from a spark touched off the day of the beefsteak
and mushrooms. "If you'll help me play it as I have seen it all along,
Mr. Rooney, I can go on to-morrow night."

"Good," agreed Mr. Rooney. "I'll shove Miss Grayson up into your part,
and cut out hers until we get a girl. We'll get the little author busy
right now, blotting out the Hawtry smell and putting you in, as I say,
refined and--"

"Oh, but where _is_ she?" moaned Mr. Farraday, coming back to his agony
of uneasiness, which had been drugged by he