ig, noisy places it all comes back. I suppose I'm silly."

Was she? Say, what's your guess about that? And, take it from me, I
didn't wonder any more at that stary look of hers. She'd seen 'em all
go--four of 'em. Good-night! I talked easy and soothin' to Ruby after
that.

"Then I went up to live with Uncle Edward at Naukeesha," she trails
along. "He's a minister there. It was he who suggested my going into
foreign mission work. I had to do something, you know, and I'd always
been such a good scholar. I love books. So I studied hard, and was sent
to the Co-ed. But the languages took so much time. Then I had to skip
several terms and work to help pay my expenses. I worked during
vacations too, at anything. Now I'm waiting for a field. They send you
out when there's a vacancy."

"How about Nelson?" says I. "He's goin' to be a missionary too?"

"He doesn't want me to go," says Ruby, shakin' her head. "That is why he
came on. He had charge of the electric light plant too, a good place.
And here he gets only odd jobs. I tell him he's silly to stay. I can't
see why he does."

"Asked him, have you?" says I.

"Why, no," says Ruby.

"Shoot it at him to-night," says I.

But she shakes her head, opens her notebook, and feeds in a copyin'
sheet as the clock points to 1. I looks up just in time to catch a
couple of them cheap bondroom sports nudgin' each other as they passes
by. Thought I'd been joshin' the Standin' Joke, I expect. Well, that's
the way I started in, I'll admit.

It's only a day or so later I has the luck to run across Oakley Mills.
Something had come up that needed to be passed on by Mr. Robert, and as
he was still out lunchin' I scouts over to his club, and finds him
stowed away at a corner table with this chatty playwright party.

He's quite a swell, Oakley is, you know; and I guess with one Broadway
hit in its second year, and a lot of road comp'nies out, he can afford
to flit around under the white lights. Him and Mr. Robert has always
been more or less chummy, and every now and then they get together like
this for a talkfest. As Mr. Mills seems to be right in the middle of
something as I drifts in, Mr. Robert waves me to a chair and signals him
to keep on, which he does.

"It's a curious mess, that's all," says Oakley, spreadin' out his
manicured fingers and shruggin' his shoulders under his Donegal Norfolk.
"I'm not sure if the new piece will ever go on."

"Another procrastinating producer?" ask