h.

"Great girl, Mazie. Cooks me dandy rice and runny eggs, and sits on the
neck of every bottle in New York while I dig. Couldn't do without her.
Say, tell her you are just giving me five hundred, will you?"

"She knows it's a thousand," answered Mr. Vandeford, truthfully. "But
I'll keep the extra five hundred you are extracting dark for you."

"That's good, and I'll tell her that I haven't got any--"

"Tell her that you haven't got any money, as usual," were the words
which Mr. Howard's fair lion-tamer used to finish his sentence of appeal
to Mr. Vandeford for his co-operation in fraud. She had entered past Mr.
Meyers with his full approval, for he felt a great relief at the sight
of her and her guardianship.

"How's Mazie?" asked Mr. Vandeford, as he rose and, with all the
ceremony he would have used for a grand duchess--or Miss Patricia
Adair--offered a chair to the pert little person with her funny,
good-humored, rather pretty face and her very smart clothes.

"Kicking along, Mr. Vandeford, thank you," was the answer. "Gee, but I
did kick the limit to-night, that's sure. I put some shady shines over
what Grant wrote into a let-down in my part for me last night in great
shape. They et it up, darling." Her naughty face beamed on Howard.
"Hawtry was in a box, left. Had a gink in soup to fish with her that
looked like real money. Have you rented her out?"

"You folks get along and stop that taxi meter you've got running on me,"
Mr. Vandeford said, answering the sally with a laugh; but it surprised
him that there was a cold space in his vitals at the insult that the
little trollop handed him with such comradery, guiltless of any
knowledge that it was an insult.

"What was that about touching pitch?" he asked himself as he walked
rapidly up four blocks to the theater where Mazie had told him he would
find the Violet with her prey. He was just in time to meet them in the
lobby. Denny was in the gorgeousness of his "soup to fish," Mazie's and
her world's term for evening attire, and the Violet in every way matched
his good looks.

"Why, where is Mademoiselle Innocence?" asked Hawtry, with a little
frown, as she perceived that Mr. Vandeford was alone and not in regalia.

"Asleep at the Y. W. C. A.," he answered shortly.

"Sure?" asked the Violet, with a little laugh for which he could have
killed her.

"Why, she promised Miss Hawtry to go to supper with us and see a
midnight show," Mr. Farraday exclaimed, and