s if anybody cared how I look; and the play--" The soft little
slurs stopped and the beautiful old-blue-silk-clad shoulder trembled
slightly against his shoulder as a little ghost of a sob came to the
surface and was suppressed while the home-made color faded from beneath
two tears that fell from the black lashes.

"Oh, please forgive me, child! It doesn't matter at all, and--"

"You oughtn't to forgive me," the voice trembled on. "Miss Hawtry would
have been wonderful in that dinner dress my grandmother wore, and
I--I've had two made out of it! I can give them to her and tell her how
to put them together again with--"

"You'll do nothing of the kind!" fairly snapped Mr. Vandeford. Then he
broke the record in his own thinking processes and decided for the
second time to tell the whole truth to this country girl with her
mixture of hay-seeds and patrician airs. He directed Valentine to
Central Park and made a clean breast of it. It is a pleasure to record
that at the Moody Indian story Patricia laughed until two other tears
ran down her cheeks, but this time they did not wring Mr. Vandeford's
heart, for they coursed over the accustomed roses and were a great
pleasure to him.

"I'll go home if you want me to," the talented author of "The Purple
Slipper" offered, with a small snap in her eyes, mingled with the
accustomed veneration of Mr. Vandeford, her producer. "I don't want to
be in anybody's way. I thought I had to come and spend all my money. I
want to see the Metropolitan and the Aquarium and Brooklyn Bridge and
Trinity Church, ... and ... a Midnight Frolic, because Mamie Lou
Whitson, at home, is expecting me to go to one even if Miss Elvira said
I ought not to. Can I see just one Frolic before I go home?"

"If you go home now the whole 'Purple Slipper' will go into cold storage
until you come back," Mr. Vandeford growled at her, and the effort it
took not to hold on to her with bodily fingers was a great strain. "I
told you the usual situation because I felt that you were clever enough
to make the best of it and help the play a lot. No author ever has seen
a play produced as he wrote it, and he has to stand seeing everybody
take a whack at it, from the producer to the man who takes the tickets
at the front door. I've got a good playwright shut up until Friday
rewriting 'The Purple Slipper'; then I'm going to work at it myself and
let Miss Hawtry write in all the things she wants to say, and cut out
all the thin