to
put in to over-balance the certainty of "The Rosie Posie Girl," and
found nothing but a vast uncertainty with many potentialities. "The
Purple Slipper" was a play of no known classification, and with Hawtry
in it was still less fish, flesh, fowl, or good red herring. And there
was added the uncertainty of that week from the twenty-third to the
first during which he had no legal hold on the fair Violet. He felt
reasonably sure that the announcement that "The Purple Slipper" would
open the big new Weiner theater, with all the clash of publicity which
he could give to it, would hold her steady on her job, but as he laid it
down on the scales, it had to be classed as an uncertainty. The fifteen
per cent. seat sales based on Mr. Gerald Height's appearance in silk
tights, velvet, and lace was about the only positive he had to lay in
the scales, and that, of course, failed to tip them to any degree. For
about fifteen minutes he sat perfectly rigid. Then he gently laid on the
uncertain side of the scales the positive and concrete faith in a pair
of sea-gray eyes, jeweled with tears, and watched "The Rosie Posie
Girl" rise high as "The Purple Slipper" sank down heavily.

After this he took a rose from the green vase, stuck it in his
buttonhole, and went forth--into his own office. He there rang his
buzzer for Mr. Meyers, and seated himself with the air of a man who has
had a burden lifted off his shoulders rather than with the air of one
about to give away half a million dollars.

"Pops, 'The Rosie Posie Girl' is sold, lock, stock, and barrel, to
Weiner for a month's try-out of 'The Purple Slipper' at the New Carnival
Theater, good guarantee for that month, and an option on a run to the
limit for eight-thousand-a-week houses. Get Lusky over the 'phone, and
you and he have the contracts drawn as tight as wax by four-thirty."

"But, Mr. Vandeford, sir, I must have a say that--"

"No, Pops, don't say anything."

"With a pardon it is that I think that Miss Adair is a very fine lady,
and so also 'The Purple Slipper.'" With this incoherent pronouncement
of sympathy and encouragement, though devastated at the loss of "The
Rosie Posie Girl," upon which he had already spent many creative days,
Mr. Meyers departed into the outer office.

For a long minute Mr. Vandeford glared at the unoffending rose in his
buttonhole, then smiled, ran his hands through his hair, turned to the
telephone, and plunged into the last lap of the race