Blue-grass and Broadway

by Maria Thompson Daviess

An hour later he had told his partner, Mr. Dennis Farraday, all about it, and showed him the deeds of execution.

"You ought not to have done it, Van. It was too big a price to pay," Mr. Farraday declared, with his mane rumpled on high.

"No," answered Mr. Vandeford, in happy calmness. "'The Purple Slipper' will pay it all out—one way or another."

"It must," declared Mr. Farraday, with helpless energy. "What can I do?"

"Oh, be the usual ray of sunshine around the place and—and keep the Violet happy and busy until we land on Broadway." Mr. Vandeford said this with a coldness in tone and voice that he had to force hard. His attitude was that he had had to sacrifice himself so why not sacrifice Mr. Farraday also? And he hated himself for that attitude.

"I understand, and you can count on me," answered Mr. Farraday, with such an innocently happy face that Mr. Vandeford groaned inwardly at the fact that he did not understand, and would surely be made to soon if his calculations on the intentions of Miss Hawtry were correct.

"I've arranged for a chair-car to take the whole company down to Atlantic City Sunday morning, so the whole bunch can have a plunge and a good rest-up before the Monday dress rehearsal." Mr. Farraday produced that piece of business with great pride.

"Good!" was all the commendation that he got, and he betook himself off for other good-natured efforts on the affairs of "The Purple Slipper."

Though at times Mr. Godfrey Vandeford approached the heroic in action, he was very human in reflexes and, having paid a price for the happiness of Miss Patricia Adair, he proceeded to partake of as much of that happiness as he could get hold of. He captured the author of "The Purple Slipper" after the rehearsals on Friday, which were the last before the dress rehearsal in Atlantic City on Monday night, because the cast of a play are, after all, so many human beings, who have to be given at least a day for such animal functions as packing trunks, closing apartments, dodging creditors, and severing home ties, and he carried her off to the country with the intention of having her all to himself for dinner at a little inn up Westchester way. After they had started in that direction and were flying behind Valentine along sun-gilded country lanes, he changed his mind, changed the road slightly, and had them landed under the wing of Mrs. Farraday for dinner. He did this with direct intention. He judged himself, and decided that it would be safest to announce to Miss Adair that her play was to have the honor of opening the great New Carnival Theatre on Broadway somewhere within two hundred yards of Mrs. Farraday. This program he carried out with efficient directness and then found a strange lacking in himself.

"Oh, how wonderful you are!" was Miss Adair's exclamation when he had imparted his news just as a young moon was silvering the poplar under which they sat on an old stone bench at the bottom of the sunken garden. "Everybody has said that you couldn't do it, but I didn't worry at all like the rest of them. I knew that you could."