e arm of
the chair and peeled his knuckle on a knob he hadn't seen.

"Great!"

"And say, I'd like you to know my wife better, Mr. Butler. If you
don't object I'll ask her to go out with us after the show for
something to eat."

"Permit me to remind you, Mr.--Mr.--er----"

"Call me Harvey," said the owner of the name.

"----to remind you that this is my party. I will play host and be
honoured if your wife will condescend to join me--and you--at any hour
and place she chooses."

"You are most kind," said Harvey, who had been mentally calculating
the three one-dollar bills in his pocket.

And that is how they came to be in the theatre that night.

The curtain was up when Butler returned. He had had a drink.

"Did you send a note back to your wife?" he asked as he sat down.

"What for?"

"To tell her we are here," hissed the other.

"No, I didn't," said Harvey, calmly. "I want to surprise her."

Butler said something under his breath and was so mad during the
remainder of the act that everybody on the stage seemed to be dressed
in red.

Miss Duluth did not have to make a change of costume between the
second and third acts. It was then that she received visitors in her
dressing-room. She had a sandwich and a glass of milk at that time,
but was perfectly willing to send across the alley for bottled beer if
her callers cared to take anything so commonplace as that.

She was sitting in her room, quite alone, with her feet cocked upon a
trunk, nibbling a sandwich and thinking of the supper Fairfax was to
give later on in the evening, when the manager of the company came
tapping at her door. People had got in the habit of walking in upon
her so unexpectedly that she issued an order for every one to knock
and then made the injunction secure by slipping the bolt. Rebecca went
to the door.

"Mr. Fairfax is here, mademoiselle," she announced a moment later.
"Mr. Ripton has brought him back and he wants to come in." Except for
the word "mademoiselle" Rebecca spoke perfect English.

Nellie took one foot down and then, thinking quickly, put it up again.
It wouldn't hurt Fairfax, she argued, to encounter a little
opposition.

"Tell Ripton I'm expecting some one else," she said, at random. "If
Mr. Fairfax wants to wait in the wings, I'll see him there."

But she had not the slightest inkling of what was in store for her in
the shape of visitors.

At that very moment Harvey and his friend were at the stage door,