ting his spoon into his
cantaloupe.

"That's fine. I don't mind that Atlantic City week, but I'm glad I'm
past ever doing the road again except to the Coast. They'll eat up 'The
Rosie Posie Girl' in Chicago and San Francisco." Miss Hawtry was
deliberately declaring her intentions to Mr. Vandeford without saying a
word about them.

"I'm going to take 'The Purple Slipper' over to London before I take it
West." Mr. Vandeford answered her declaration with another not put in
words, but so well did he know the workings of her shrewd, small mind
that he saw that the game was up unless he did what he must do. During
the rest of their luncheon they talked about the Trevors.

Straight from the Astor Mr. Vandeford walked into the office of Mr.
Weiner.

"Weiner," he asked, without any sort of preamble, "will you give a
month's try-out of my play, 'The Purple Slipper,' in your New Carnival
Theater from October first to November first, with a proper guarantee,
and then an option on an unlimited run there if it makes good, for a
half-interest in 'The Rosie Posie Girl' _without_ Hawtry?" Mr. Vandeford
knew that he was offering Mr. Weiner a good thing, for the rights of
"The Rosie Posie Girl" had been hotly contested by all the big
theatrical managers on Broadway the winter before, and Mr. Vandeford had
got them from Hilliard because of his success with "Dear Geraldine" by
the same author. They had all coveted it because it was one of those
combinations about the success of which there could be no doubt. In
offering Weiner a half-interest Mr. Vandeford was aware that he was
offering him at least a hundred thousand dollars, but Mr. Vandeford's
hunch about the purple on purple was beginning to cost him dear, though
at least a hundred thousand dollars did not seem too much to pay to keep
the agony of failure out of a pair of sea-gray eyes that had trusted him
the first time they had looked into his.

"With Hawtry it goes; without Hawtry, no, Mr. Vandeford," was the prompt
answer.

"With Hawtry six months from now?" questioned Mr. Vandeford.

"It is that I have a weak heart, Mr. Vandeford, and I do not trade in
futures," answered Mr. Weiner, with a spark in his black eyes.

"You know my fix, Weiner; now what will you take for the New Carnival
October first for my Hawtry show?"

"I will trade that entire 'Rosie Posie Girl' manuscript, with all rights
for that New Carnival Theater on October first, with option for the
entire seaso