in' the
bronze statue of Lafayette to hand him down a match. Ruby drops back
into her vague gazin' act and shakes her head. So at last he ends by
askin' her to think it over for a day, and Ruby goes back to her desk.

"How absurd!" growls Oakley. "But I simply must have her. Why, we would
pay her three hundred dollars a week."

I catches my breath at that. "Excuse me if I seem to crash in," says I,
"but was that a gust of superheated air, or did you mean it?"

"I should be glad to submit a contract to Miss Everschott on those
terms," says he.

"Then leave it to me," says I; "that is, to me and Nelson."

Did we win Ruby? Say, with our descriptions of what three hundred a week
might mean in the way of Christmas presents to Uncle Ed, and donations
to the poor box, and a few personal frills on the side, we shot that
foreign missionary scheme so full of holes it looked like a last year
mosquito bar at the attic window.

"But I'm sure I sha'n't like it at all," says Ruby as she signs her
name.

I didn't deny that. I knew she was in for a three weeks' drillin' by the
roughest stage manager in the business. You know who. But he can deliver
the goods, can't he? He makes the green ones act. Look at what he did
with Ruby! Only it don't seem like actin' at all. She's just Ruby, in
the same puckered waist, her hair mopped around her head in the same
silly braid, and that same stary look in her big eyes. But it gets 'em
strong. Packed every night!

I meets Nelson here only yesterday, and he was tellin' me. Comin' along
some himself, Nelson is. He's opened an office and is biddin' for big
jobs.

"I've just landed my first contract," says he.

"Good!" says I. "What's it for?"

"A fifty-foot, twenty-thousand-candle-power sign over the theater," says
he, "with Ruby's name in it. She's signed up for another year, you
know."

"Well, well!" says I. "Then it's all off with the heathen, eh?"

And Nelson he drifts up the street wearin' a grin.

CHAPTER IX

TORCHY GETS AN INSIDE TIP

There was two commuters, one loaded down with a patent runner sled, the
other chewin' a cigar impatient and consultin' his watch; a fat woman
with a six-year-old who was teasin' to go see Santa Claus in the window
again; a sporty-lookin' old boy with a red tie who was blinkin' googoos
out of his puffy eyes; and then there was me, draped in my new
near-English top coat and watchin' the swing doors expectant.

So you see they ain't part