aring and seeing "The Purple
Slipper" and Mr. Vandeford's fortunes rescued and reconstructed right
before his ears and eyes.

"There ain't but two places for a refined lady to run in Atlantic
City,--the railroad station and the ocean,--and I bet Mr. Vandeford is
lugging her from the railroad station right now," Mr. Rooney said with
easy conviction. "Course she'd dodge back to the Christian ladies home
the first mud-puddle she stepped into, but we'll set her on her feet and
rub the splashes off her white stockings and--"

Mr. Rooney was interrupted in his kindly flow of reassurance by the
appearance of a wheel-chair propelled by the shrewd Italian youth, who
had that evening made his individual fortune, in which sat Mr. Vandeford
and the author of "The Purple Slipper." Without command, he stopped
beside the group of friends, and Mr. Vandeford alighted, but Miss Adair
shrank back into the shadow of the perambulator.

"Oh, darling, listen," cried Miss Lindsey, as she reached into that
retreat and drew Miss Adair into her arms. "Miss Hawtry has thrown up
the part and gone back to New York, and I am going to act it for you
just as you and I have talked about it all this time. Mr. Rooney is
going to help us, and we--we are going to make good for you--and Mr.
Vandeford--to-morrow night. We are!"

"Just watch us, Miss Adair. I'll do my best, and I'll--I'll be like we
talked the other day," Mr. Height said as he came to the other side of
the wicker retreat of the hunted author. Something in his voice made Mr.
Dennis Farraday put his arm around the lizard's shoulders, a thing he
would not have thought of doing a week ago.

"We are all going to stand by, little girl, and it'll be some play that
we produce at the New Carnival October first," Mr. Farraday put in by
way of his contribution to the wounded young author.

However, it was the crack of Mr. Rooney's whip that brought her to her
feet again.

"Miss Adair, you and Lindsey come back with me to the theater now," he
commanded the shrinking and tragic author. "Somebody get Fido and tell
him to wake up everybody and have 'em all at the theater to rehearse in
a hour; that'll be three o'clock. Mr. Vandeford, you'd better get in a
press story over long distance before Hawtry beats you to it. You may
catch a morning paper or two. Now, everybody get out and work like fun
and we'll show Broadway a sure-fire hit October first."

"Can you do it, Bill?" Mr. Vandeford asked in a qu