al ideas, for a people on the down-slide, and a landlady, a
puny, insignificant ant of a female, interrupts me to demand money, and
when I assure her, most politely, that I have none, she puts me out,
actually puts me out!"

Bambi choked back a laugh.

"Why didn't you come here?"

"I did. Your father refused to see me; he was working at his crazy
figures. I burst in, and demanded you, but he couldn't remember where
you had gone."

"What a pity! Well----"

"I told him I would wait in the garden. If necessary, I would sleep
there."

"Yas'm, yas'm, dat's when he called me in, to tell me to bemin' him."

"That will do, Ardelia."

"Yassum," said the handmaiden, and withdrew.

"Now, go on."

"I was full of my big act, so I walked and walked for hours. Then I lay
down in the summer-house, and I must have gone to sleep."

"Go up and take a bath, and come down to some breakfast. I will send
Ardelia to get some of father's things for you if you need them."

"All right, but don't delay with breakfast. If I don't get this act
down, I may lose it. That fiend, in female guise, held my paper."

"Go on! Get ready!"

He plunged out, and Bambi went to send Ardelia to him, while she cooked
his eggs and fried his bacon. As she worked, she smiled, out of sheer
amusement.

In due course of time, he appeared, freshened up, and with renewed
eagerness to be at work. He scarcely noticed Bambina as she served his
breakfast. He ate as if he were starved.

"I suppose the landlady held your clothes?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask. It was unimportant."

"How much do you owe her?"

He looked at her in surprise.

"I have no idea."

"Have you any money at all?"

"Certainly not. I'd have given it to her if I had, so she wouldn't
interrupt me."

"What are you going to do?"

"Oh, I don't know. I can't think about it now. I am full of this big
idea. It's a dramatization of the Brotherhood of Man, of a sublime,
socialistic world----"

"Has it occurred to you, ever, Jarvis, that the world isn't ready for
the Brotherhood of Man yet? It's just out of the tent stage, where War
is the whole duty of Man."

"But it must be ready," he urged, seriously, "for I am here with my
message."

She smiled at him as one would at a conceited child.

"Poor old Jarvis, strayed out of Elysian fields! Were you thinking of
sleeping in the summer-house permanently?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter; only the play matters. Give me some paper,
Bambi, an