rdy tomato vines.

"Little old New York will sit up and take notice when it sees you in
party dimity, Pat," he said as he smiled down into the eager, gray eyes
that were raised to his, beaming through their long black lashes.

"Oh, I hope I'll make friends, Roger," Patricia answered the warmth in
his voice as she clung to the warmth and strength of his arm as if in
foreboding.

"Of course New York will love you, Pat. Hasn't everybody always loved
you?" he asked tenderly as he put his work-worn hand over hers on his
arm.

"Yes," answered Patricia, with her head suddenly held high. "If anybody
don't like me, I'll make them."

At about the same hour that this challenge to his world was flung from
the lips of the beautiful and talented Miss Patricia Adair upon the
moonlit and mockingbird trilled air of the Bluegrass State Mr. Godfrey
Vandeford was engaged in about the twenty-fifth round of the spanking of
Miss Violet Hawtry in the State of New York, and he was having a hard
time accomplishing his purpose.

"It's just like your selfishness to try to put me into a piffling play
by some unknown author with every risk to be run, when Weiner wants to
buy your contract and put me into 'The Rosie Posie Girl,' which is a
play by Hilliard that gives me scope for all of my ability. He is
willing to give you a fifth interest in it and that's all you deserve.
I'll show you whether or not you can sacrifice my career,
you ----! ----! ----! you!" And with which tirade the beautiful Violet
stormed up and down the veranda of Highcliff in front of the supine
figure of her manager, which was clad in immaculate white flannel, suede
and linen, with a blue silk scarf knotted at the base of his lean,
bronze throat, which matched the blue of his keen eyes under their
gray-sprinkled brows, as the only bit of color in his irreproachable
costuming.

"You've read neither play, my dear Violet. You may like 'The Purple
Slipper.' In which case you get the same salary and I get all the
profits instead of the one-fifth our friend Weiner is offering me for
letting you act in my other play," he answered his star's outburst in an
easy, mollifying drawl.

"Everybody knows that a Hilliard play is a _play_, and I'm not going to
try out a new playwright just to put money in your pockets. Why should
I?" demanded the star virago, in a fury that made her snapping Irish
blue eyes, tall, strapping, curved body, and pale tawny hair combine
into a good sembla