his plays, it said he had paid the author of
'Dear Geraldine' more than a hundred thousand dollars in royalties. That
is what made me write the play."

"Say, let me take it sitting down," said Roger as he sank upon the grass
beside a rose bed that had a row of spring onions growing odoriferously
defiant under the very shower of its petals, and laid the sack of
precious meal tenderly across his knees. "Now go on and tell me."

"You see, Roger, I had to do something to get the money to keep the
house for Grandfather. You know we couldn't get any more mortgage money,
because it had closed up or something, and--"

"Did Covington tell you he was going to foreclose after I--that is,
right away?" demanded Roger fiercely, with a snap in the blue eyes above
the freckles.

"No," said Patricia, as she settled herself on the grass beside Roger,
with the valuable sugar balanced tenderly upon her knee. "He told me
that he would let it stand just as it was for three months until October
first, but after that we would have to--to tell--Grandfather and move,"
a quiver came into Patricia's soft voice that had in it the patrician,
slurring softness that can only come from the throat of a grand dame
sprung from the race which has dominated blue-grass pastures. "Doctor
Healy says it won't be long but--but now he'll--he'll die in his own
home that Grandmother built where he fought off the Indians. Her play
has saved us."

"I had fixed it to run until I make my crops," said Roger, with a choke
in his voice that was a rich masculine accompaniment to Patricia's.

"The play will have been running six weeks by that time, and I can pay
most of it off. A hundred thousand a year is almost ten thousand a month
and--"

"But all plays don't succeed, Pat, honey, and--"

"The 'Times Magazine' said that Godfrey Vandeford had never had a
failure, and didn't you read that he wants to star Violet Hawtry in it?
She was 'Dear Geraldine.' How could it fail?" Patricia was positively
haughty toward Roger's timorousness.

"That's so," admitted Roger, convinced. "And we can easy get by on the
two fifty until October, especially with the garden I am going to raise.
I'm no Godfrey Vandeford, but I'm a first-class producer--of potatoes
and onions and cabbage and turnip greens and corn. In these war times a
potato producer ranks with any old producer."

"But I won't be able to leave all of the two hundred and fifty to use
this summer. I'll have to take som