Little Miss By-The-Day

by Lucille Van Slyke

"Dat guy you see going around de coiner," he explained to the gathering crowd who helped to pick him up. "I wasn't doing nothing to him, I was justa stooping over when all to onct he hit me and threw me paste in the street and grabbed me brush and trew it after me paste and just as I was going to lam him one he ups and shoves some money in me fists and groans, 'Beg your pardon, of course you aren't responsible' and off he goes—and somebody better watch after him for he must have a heluva jag."

The stalwart citizen did not stop to reason even after he had vented the first edge of his rage upon the innocent bill poster. He let himself intuitively guess at the whole damning chain of the Fat Baritone and his eternal gossiping and the pretty actress and the acquisitive manager. The intensity of his manner when he pulled open the manager's door frightened the manager's stenographer into an unwilling admission that Mr. Graemer had just left for Brooklyn. And a dazed taxi starter, who decided that somebody's life must be at stake, remembered with much distinctness that the address, which Mr. Graemer had given some half hour before was Montrose Place, Brooklyn. He remembered it because they'd had to look it up in a street guide.

If Dudley Hamilt had been in a temper before he heard that address he was literally enraged when he did hear it. Of what had happened in Montrose Place during the spring months while he had been in the West he had not the faintest inkling. The last time he had seen the little street it had looked as desolate and forlorn as on the day when Felicia had come back to it. He assumed with that rapidity with which an angry mind makes decisions, that Graemer was proceeding to Montrose Place for more of the damnably clever "local color" with which he was wont to dress his plays; that not content with having dramatized Hamilt's youthful woes to the orchestra circle he wanted to reproduce the whole thing photographically.

Hamilt's thoughts raced turbulently as his own taxi followed the route of Graemer's. He was keenly aware that his frenzy was utterly illogical, that he hadn't a reasonable argument to present against the play, that there was no possible way in which he could prevent any man from writing any play he wished or naming his heroine any name he chose and yet he grew angrier and angrier as his cab bumped over the old bridge.

"There's not a chance in a thousand of my getting my hands on him, but, oh, if I only could—" he thought vindictively.

As a matter of fact his "chance in a thousand" was a very good one, since he was able to direct his driver explicitly because of his familiarity with the neighborhood.

Moreover, the astute manager was not making very speedy headway in his interview with the erstwhile Mademoiselle Folly. His quick eyes commended the charming figure that the lady made in her quaint frock against the crumbling garden wall. He spoke a very pretty speech about her appearance. But he found her haughty indeed considering that she was nothing but an upstart vaudeville performer. She had no manners at all, he decided, for she did not even suggest that he sit down. He actually had to make his proposition standing.

"Your agent let us know that you're starting for abroad. That's a nice little plan but it won't get you anywhere at all," he began tersely. "Except of course that you may get a little fun out of it if you've never been on the other side. But the best thing for you to do before you go off for your vacation is to have a contract, signed and sealed, in your inside pocket. Frankly, I'm charmed with your—er— personality. I saw you a couple of months ago at the Palace and I like the way you get hold of people. I should say that with the right kind of training you ought to go quite a long way: who knows?" he was laughing so good humoredly that he did not see her wince, "some of these days I might pick up a nice little play for you—"

The lady was standing perfectly still. He decided that she had admirable repose. Her wide eyes looked straight into his. The intensity of her low voice was a bit thrilling.

"If evaire I did want a play," she answered coolly, "I would know exactly where I would 'pick it up,' as you call it. I would not 'pick it up' the way you 'pick up' plays, M'sieur Graemer. I have a friend whose play you 'picked up'—" she gestured toward the house. Her deliberate reiteration of his chance phrase was irritating to say the least. He turned uncomfortably to look at the stairway toward which she was motioning. And he did have the grace to look rather disconcerted when he saw Miss Blythe Modder approaching. He glanced quickly back to the woman he had come to see.