to Billiken, to find cold eyes upon
her, level, unloving, hostile eyes, but she had an antidote. Gazing
blithely back at him with the wide little grin which had earned her the
name of "the God of Things as They Ought to Be," she held out her arms
with a gurgling cry and flung herself at the young man with the gay
cravat as she had flung herself at her mother two minutes before.

The hot color flooded his face, his freckles were drowned in a red sea,
his flanging ears were crimson. Suddenly, gropingly, he reached out for
them both, and got the two of them into his arms. "It'll be O.K.," he
said, huskily, winking hard. "It'll be O.K.! Say, listen, I got it all
figured out! They been wantin' me to go to the Rochester store anyway,
and we don't know a livin' soul there!"

They went away, the other three, and left them there together, and there
were two little dabs of color on the matron's high cheekbones and her
sharp eyes looked oddly dim. "Well," she said, "well--I guess that's
settled right enough. And I guess we've got you to thank for it, Miss
Vail."

"We have, surely, God save you kindly," said Michael Daragh, and his face
had what Jane called its stained-glass-window look.

She felt very flushed and humbled under their beaming approbation.
"There's only her own courage to thank!" But she snatched up a bit of the
despised decoration, her cheeks scarlet. "You know,--I'm so happy--so
gorgeously, dizzily happy--I can hear that magenta-colored paper joy-bell
ring a silvery chime!"

CHAPTER VIII

It was November when Jane made her exodus from the Vermont village and
her entry into New York, and by early summer she had written and sold
three one-act plays for vaudeville which yielded plump little weekly
royalties and gave her a reputation quite out of proportion to her output
and experience. They began to advertise her sketches as "different" and
to build up a vogue. "So and So in a Jane Vail act," said a pretty
billboard, and Rodney Harrison gave himself jocularly proud airs as her
discoverer and sponsor.

"I see clearly," said Jane, "that I must call you my Fairy God-brother!"

"I do not seem to crave the brother effect," said Mr. Harrison
deliberately, before he gave his attention to a hovering head waiter. He
was distinctly what her village called "not a marrying man," but he was
beginning to have his moments of meaningful look and word.

"Well, then," said Jane, after a