vator, and if it's all right tell her I'll see her."

A moment later a side door opened--not the door by which Miss Raymond
had departed--and a young woman of determined though graceful and
alluring deportment entered.

"Well," she said, "how about it, Mont? Do I get it or don't I?"

"Sit down, kid," Fieldstone said, himself seated; for he had not risen
at his visitor's entrance. "How goes it, sweetheart?"

It is to be understood that "sweetheart" in this behalf had no more
significance than "kid." It was a synonym for "kid" and nothing else.

"Rossmore says you're going to play Raymond in the new piece," she went
on, ignoring his question; "and you know you told me----"

"Now listen here, kid," he said, "you ain't got no kick coming. In
'Rudolph' you've got a part that's really the meaty part of the whole
piece. I watched your performance from behind last night, kid, and I
hope I may die if I didn't say to Raymond that it was immense and you
were running her out of the business. I thought she'd throw a fit!"

"Then I do get the part in the new piece?" Miss Vivian Haig
insisted--for it was none other than herself.

"Well, it's like this," Fieldstone explained: "If you play another
season with 'Rudolph,' and----"

Miss Haig waited to hear no more, however. She bowed her head in her
hands and burst into sobs; and she might well have saved herself the
trouble, for to J. Montgomery Fieldstone the tears of an actress on or
off were only "bus. of weeping." He lit a fresh cigar, and it might
have been supposed that he blew the smoke in Miss Haig's direction as a
substitute for smelling salts or aromatic spirits of ammonia. As a
matter of fact he just happened to be facing that way.

"Now don't do that, kid," he said, "because you know as well as I do
that if there was anything I could do for the daughter of Morris
Katzberger I'd do it. Him and me worked as cutters together in the old
days when I didn't know no more about the show business than Morris
does to-day; but I jumped you right from the chorus into the part of
Sonia in 'Rudolph,' and you got to rest easy for a while, kid."

"I g-got notices above the star," Miss Haig sobbed; "and you told
popper the night after we opened in Atlantic City that you were
planning to give me a b-better part next season."

"Ain't your father got diabetes?" Fieldstone demanded. "What else would
I tell him?"

"But you said to Sidney Rossmore that if I could dance as well as I
s