hickory-nut candy in her hand and kept saying sharp things while
giving everybody something sweet to take away the taste. Julia said she
was that girl, but Peter indignantly denied anybody's being anybody, and
then we all kept still. Just then the curtain went down on the second
act, with the whole house in an uproar; and there was a call for Peter
and Farrington.

Peter went and left me sitting there in the shadow alone, while he
stepped out on the stage all by himself--the stage of his life. And, oh,
I was so glad to be in the shadow all by myself, for I had been as happy
as I could and it was beginning to wear off. I wanted Sam--I wanted him
even if the wonderful woman in the play was going to have him in real
life, too, as I knew would have to happen some day. Also Sam deserved to
be there that night if anybody did, and he was way down in the Harpeth
Valley working, working, working, it seemed to me, that all the rest of
the world might play. I wanted him! I felt as if I couldn't stand it
when Peter stepped forward, looking like the most beautiful Keats the
world had ever known, and the whole house gasped at his beauty and kept
still to hear what a man that looked like that would have to say. I
stifled a sob and looked around to see if I could flee somewhere, when
suddenly my groping hand was taken in two big, warm, horny ones, and
Sam's deep voice said in the same old fish-hook tone:

"Steady, Bettykin, and watch old Pete take his first hurdle."

I took one look at a great big glorious Sam in all sorts of fine linen
that was purple in the mist of my eyes, and then I was perfectly quiet,
with no fish-hook at all in my arm or in my life. I heard every word of
Peter's speech, and laughed and almost cried over the one Farrington
made about the young American drama, with his arm across Peter's
shoulder. I forgot all about Sam because he was there, and just reveled
in being happier than I had been since I had adopted Peter and the play,
now that it was successfully out of our systems.

And it _was_ successfully out. Nobody who heard the thunder after the
last act could have doubted that. The _New Times_ the next day said it
was "The burgeoning of the American poetic drama," and another paper
said, "Bubbles fresh from the fount of American youth." We got the
papers and read them coming home from Peter's supper-party over at the
Astor, which his New York friends gave because they wanted to see more
of his Hayesboro frie