--
McManus is the name--James McManus. Some call me Jimmy."

"Good-night, Jimmy," said Madame.

XX

THE RATHSKELLER AND THE ROSE

Miss Posie Carrington had earned her success. She began life
handicapped by the family name of "Boggs," in the small town known
as Cranberry Corners. At the age of eighteen she had acquired the
name of "Carrington" and a position in the chorus of a metropolitan
burlesque company. Thence upward she had ascended by the legitimate
and delectable steps of "broiler," member of the famous "Dickey-bird"
octette, in the successful musical comedy, "Fudge and Fellows,"
leader of the potato-bug dance in "Fol-de-Rol," and at length to
the part of the maid "'Toinette" in "The King's Bath-Robe," which
captured the critics and gave her her chance. And when we come to
consider Miss Carrington she is in the heydey of flattery, fame
and fizz; and that astute manager, Herr Timothy Goldstein, has her
signature to iron-clad papers that she will star the coming season in
Dyde Rich's new play, "Paresis by Gaslight."

Promptly there came to Herr Timothy a capable twentieth-century young
character actor by the name of Highsmith, who besought engagement as
"Sol Haytosser," the comic and chief male character part in "Paresis
by Gaslight."

"My boy," said Goldstein, "take the part if you can get it. Miss
Carrington won't listen to any of my suggestions. She has turned down
half a dozen of the best imitators of the rural dub in the city. She
declares she won't set a foot on the stage unless 'Haytosser' is the
best that can be raked up. She was raised in a village, you know, and
when a Broadway orchid sticks a straw in his hair and tries to call
himself a clover blossom she's on, all right. I asked her, in a
sarcastic vein, if she thought Denman Thompson would make any kind
of a show in the part. 'Oh, no,' says she. 'I don't want him or John
Drew or Jim Corbett or any of these swell actors that don't know a
turnip from a turnstile. I want the real article.' So, my boy, if
you want to play 'Sol Haytosser' you will have to convince Miss
Carrington. Luck be with you."

Highsmith took the train the next day for Cranberry Corners. He
remained in that forsaken and inanimate village three days. He found
the Boggs family and corkscrewed their history unto the third and
fourth generation. He amassed the facts and the local color of
Cranberry Corners. The village had not grown as rapidly as had Miss
Carrington. T