with looks.' Try your hand, old man, and if you pick
a flivver there are plenty more to cast in and her out. By!" And before
Mr. Farraday could protest he was left alone in the inquisition-room.
And as Mr. Godfrey Vandeford went down in an elevator on his way to the
Claridge to deliver the next instalment of the spanking of Miss Violet
Hawtry, he passed a live wire going up opposite him and met one walking
down Forty-second Street, neither of which he could be expected to
recognize, as he had never seen either.

The first of the two dynamos walked into the office of the Vandeford
Producing Company and failed to thrill Mr. Adolph Meyers in the least, a
fact for which he could never afterward account. He motioned her into
the inner office, and left her to her fate and Mr. Dennis Farraday.

"Good-morning, Mr. Vandeford," she said in a queer, throaty kind of
voice that had in it a "come hither" of unusual quality, which
suggested that in her production a Romney woman might have loved a Greek
dancer well. She stood at ease before the long desk with a grace that
was unmistakably that of complete assurance.

"I'm not Mr. Vandeford, but his--his partner, Dennis Farraday. Er--er,
won't you be seated?" and with the happy, considerate manner of his that
he had always used to all women, he offered her his own chair and
appropriated the one of authority that Mr. Vandeford always occupied.

"Thank you," answered the young woman, with an ease equal to his own.
And then they both waited while regarding each other seriously. Finally
the tension relaxed and Dennis Farraday gave a big, jovial laugh while
he made his admission:

"I don't know a thing about the play business. I'm just sitting in with
Mr. Vandeford for the fun of it."

"An angel?" asked the girl, with a laugh that somehow accorded with
his.

"That's it. He's gone out and left me to--to cut my eye teeth."

"On me?"

"Looks that way," and again they both laughed.

"Maybe I can help you," volunteered the girl, after the laugh. "I am
Mildred Lindsey, and Mr. Chambers sent me in to see if I could support
Miss Hawtry."

"Er--er, what experience?" Mr. Dennis Farraday managed to ask by fishing
into his impressions of the last two hours.

"Five years in stock on the Pacific coast, two years in towns between,
and two weeks in a flivver here on Broadway early in the spring. Dead
broke, hungry, and about ready to make good for some manager." As the
answer was fired point