asps with her, and had got the notion
across to her that he wanted her to make a friend of him and a
confidant, he'd be going away now, afterward, under the painful
misgiving that he was a bit of an old fool. The product of all this
irritation was, however, that he declined Rose's offer of a view of her
patterns rather bruskly.

"It was just curiosity, as I said. Go along your own way and don't worry
about me. You will be all right."

Rose couldn't feel much conviction behind this expression of
confidence, and she went away, as I have said, in a sort of panic. Was
she all wrong, after all? Couldn't you design stage costumes except by
making pictures of them? She knew what he meant by water-colored plates.
She'd seen them framed in the lobbies at musical shows she'd been to
with Rodney. That was how costume designers worked, was it? Well she
knew she never could do anything like that.

But her fears only lasted until she got back to her room and caught a
reassuring look at the pattern that was assembled on the form. After
all, the pictures in the lobby weren't so important as the costumes on
the stage. And as for Galbraith--well, if he didn't expect too much of
her, that was all the better.

In keeping with the good luck which had attended everything that
happened in connection with this first venture of hers, she was able to
tell Galbraith that both sets of costumes were done and ready to try on,
on the very day he announced that the next rehearsal would be held at
ten to-morrow morning at the Globe. It might very easily have happened,
of course, that Rose's enterprise, together with Galbraith's partnership
in it, had become known here or there, got passed on from one to
another, with modifications and embellishments according to fancy, and
grown to be a monument of scandal and conjecture. But nothing is more
capricious than the heat-lightning of gossip, and it just chanced that,
up to the morning of Rose's little triumph, no one beyond Galbraith and
Rose herself even suspected the identity with Dane of the chorus, of the
costumer who was to submit, on approval, gowns for the sextette. The
fact, of course, was bound to come out on the day the company moved over
for rehearsals to the Globe, and the event was very happily dramatized
for Rose, by her ability to let the costumes appear first and her
authorship of them only after their success was beyond dispute.

She persuaded the girls to wait until all six were dress