house and one from
an electrical expert, leaned back in his chair, and prepared to open the
violet communication. "We dropped twenty thousand cool on 'Miss Cut-up,'
and those sixteen pairs of legs cost us fifteen hundred a week. We might
be in danger of starving right here on Broadway, if we hadn't picked a
sure-fire hit in 'The Rosie Posie Girl.'"

"Ain't it the truth," answered Mr. Adolph Meyers, as he glanced up from
his typewriter with a twinkle in his big black eyes that were like gems
in a round, very sedate, even sad, Hebrew face. "Bare legs and 'cut-ups'
is already old now, Mr. Vandeford. It is that we must have now a play
with a punch."

"The law won't let us take anything more off the chorus, so we'll have
to swing back and put a lot on. Costumes that cost a million will be the
next drag, mark me, Pop," Mr. Godfrey Vandeford declaimed with a gloomy
brow, as he still further delayed exploring the violet missive.

"A hundred thousand it will take for costuming 'The Rosie Posie Girl,'"
agreed Pop dolefully, from above the letter he was slowly pecking out of
the machine.

"For furnishing chiffon belts, you mean, not costumes, if we go by
Corbett's clothes ideas," growled the pessimistic, prospective producer
of the possible next season's hit in the girl-show line.

"You have it right," answered Pop, sympathetically.

"If I hadn't promised to let old Denny in on my Violet Hawtry show for
the fall I'd be tempted to throw back everything, even 'The Rosie Posie
Girl' and go gunning for potatoes or onions up on a Connecticut farm;
but the show bug has bit Denny hard and I'll have to be the one to
shear him and not leave it to any of the others. I'll be more merciful
to his millions; but asking him to put up half of a cool hundred and
fifty thousand is a bit raw. Wish I had a nice little glad play with an
under twenty cast for him to cut his teeth on instead of the 'Rosie
Posie.'"

"It's six plays on the shelf now for reading," reminded Mr. Meyers,
eagerly, for to him fell the task of weeding all plays sent into the
office of Godfrey Vandeford, Theatrical Producer, and his optimistic
soul suffered when he discovered a gem and found himself unable to get
Mr. Vandeford to read so much as the first act unless he caught him in
just such a mood as the one in which he now labored. "Now, I want that
you take just a peep, Mr. Vandeford, at that new Hinkle comedy for which
I have written already five times to delay--"