s Mr. Robert careless.

"No, a finicky author this time," says Oakley. "You see, there is one
part, a character part, which I'm insisting must be cast right. It
seemed easy at first. But these women of our American stage! No
training, no facility, no understanding! Not one of them can fill it,
and we've tried nearly a dozen. If I could only find the original!"

"Eh?" says Mr. Robert, who's been payin' more attention to manipulatin'
the soda siphon than to Oakley's beefin'. "What original?"

"The dumbest, woodenest, most conscientious young female person it has
ever been my lot to meet," goes on Mr. Mills. "Talk about your rare
types! You should have known Faithful Fannie (my name for her, you
know). It was out in the Middle West last summer. I had two or three
weeks' work to do on the new piece, revising it to fit Amy Dean. All
stars of that magnitude demand it, you understand.

"Well, I should have stayed right here until it was done, but some
Chicago friends wanted me to go with them up into the lake region,
promised me an ideal place to work in--all that. So I went. I might have
had better sense. You know these bungalow colonies in the woods--where
they live in fourteen-room log cabins, fitted with electric lights and
English butlers? Bah! It was bridge and tennis and dancing day and
night, with a new mob every week-end. Work? As well try it in the middle
of the Newport Casino.

"So I hunted up a little third-rate summer hotel a mile or so off, where
the guests were few and the food wretched, and camped down with my
mangled script and my typewriter. There I met Fannie the Unforgetful.
She was the waitress I happened to draw out of a job lot. I suppose it
was her debut at that sort of thing. For the sake of hungry humanity I
hope it was. What she did not know about serving was simply amazing; but
her capacity for absorbing suggestions and obeying orders was profound.
'Could I have a warm plate?' I asked at the first meal. 'Oh, certainly,
Sir,' says Fannie, and from then on every dish she brought me was piping
hot, even to the cold-meat platter and the ice cream saucer. It was that
way with every wish I was rash enough to express. Fannie never forgot,
and she kept to the letter of the law.

"Also she would stand patiently and watch me eat. That is, she would fix
her eyes on me intently, never moving, and keep them there for a quarter
of an hour at a time. A little embarrassing, you know, to be so
constantly obser