nd it's not
your fault that there is only the little end of the horn left for 'The
Rosie Posie Girl' for the time being," he explained to Mr. Vandeford.
"You see, it is a kind of double-cross that acts both ways. If it goes,
people will think it was worth your paying a big price for, and if it
fails, they'll think the 'Rosie Posie Girl' couldn't have been much if
you traded a chance on such a poor show for it."

"Goes!" said Mr. Vandeford, but he was aware that the smart manoeuver,
which would once have delighted his soul, made him intensely weary.

In fact, so fatigued did he feel when he left this young press schemer,
that he dropped into his bed for an hour, and had a masseur come and
pound him into condition to go to the train with good Dennis Farraday to
meet Mrs. Farraday, Mrs. and Mr. and Miss Van Tyne, who arrived at five
o'clock from big Manhattan. Mr. Farraday had had a like operation
performed upon himself, and was in such a radiant condition that Mr.
Vandeford felt badly eclipsed beside him.

"What does it all mean about Miss Hawtry and Miss Lindsey and the show,
Van?" Mrs. Farraday questioned, with greater anxiety in her face than
she had had at any other opening night of her favorite's successful
shows. "Are we going to have a terrible time?"

"I'm going to put you in a wheel-chair and let Denny take you up to the
north end of the board-walk and tell you all about it while I locate and
make comfortable the rest of the folks," Mr. Vandeford answered with a
deep relief at her presence in his eyes.

"Where are my girls?" she questioned.

"Both dead--asleep," he answered, as if deeply happy to be able to say
it of his star and his author.

His statement was only partly true, for while Miss Adair slept the sleep
of the emotionally unanxious, Mildred Lindsey sat crouched by her
window, with her eyes looking far out over the Atlantic Ocean, waiting
for the result of Mr. Dennis Farraday's talk with his mother at the
north end of the board-walk.

There are occasionally mothers who bear sons who can tell them all about
things, and Mrs. Farraday really enjoyed the whole story that big,
bonnie Dennis poured out to her at the sunset hour by the brink of old
ocean, Dago Italiana squatting on his heels out of hearing and basking
in inactivity, from the moment of the beefsteak episode in his and Miss
Lindsey's acquaintance up to the moment in which Miss Hawtry had
established herself in his arms on the occasion o