Blue-grass and Broadway

by Maria Thompson Daviess

"I'll certainly do it if you don't take me back where I belong, wherever it is," threatened Miss Adair. "I hope Mildred isn't as—as tired as I am and—and can help me. I'll go to bed with my clothes on if she doesn't," Miss Adair gasped between yawns, and fluttered to Mr. Vandeford with a frank intention of gaining support.

"Back to the hotel, boy, and go a good pace. Double tip," commanded Mr. Vandeford to their propelling Italian youth, with an alarm which puzzled him as much as it would have puzzled many of his friends, while he accorded his exhausted author the amount of support needed for the occasion—and no more.

And as Mr. Rooney had hoped, the entire cast of "The Purple Slipper" slept into the afternoon of the dress-rehearsal day in the complete collapse which the sea air induced, and they were in a good condition for restringing. In fact, some of them began that process for themselves by an afternoon plunge in the ocean.

One of those plunges had an after-effect on the fate of "The Purple Slipper" further than keying up Mr. Gerald Height for his dress rehearsals. When he discovered, while detaining Miss Adair for a chat after his late luncheon, that the author had never beheld the sea before in all her inland existence, and had never been in it, he insisted on procuring a bathing-suit and initiating her into that sport. She assented to the proposition with the greatest eagerness, and in less than half an hour she had trusted herself to the arms of Mr. Gerald Height and the Atlantic Ocean. They were both rough in their handling, and finally she came to resent the boldness of the former as much as she enjoyed that of the latter. With crimson in her cheeks and lightning in her eyes, she first attempted to drown them both, then waded to shore, sat down on the sand, and said things to Mr. Gerald Height, which had the magic effect of making him unburden himself and his lizard-like career to her in its entirety.

"You see, I didn't know what a girl who—who wrote your play was like exactly, and because I couldn't find out I have kept on trying. Now—now, by George, I know," he said, with a boyishness coming into his murky eyes. "Say, you know my mother was a Kentucky girl, and I guess that is one reason I have stuck by this fool—this 'Purple Slipper.' That and wanting to chase you down."

"Well, now that you've 'chased me down' and found that I'm not—not there, you'll stay by me and 'The Purple Slipper,' won't you?" Miss Adair asked, and then like two merry children they both laughed at her jumble.

"I will," answered Mr. Height, with the queer attachment in his heart that a man feels for a perfectly good woman who is jolly and friendly with him after she has allowed him to tell her just how wicked he is or thinks he is. "I thought the whole thing was a flivver, but when Vandeford got the opening of the New Carnival for it, I sat up and took notice. Just you watch the stuff between Hawtry and me put a line a mile long from the box office."

"I'm wild to see you and Miss Hawtry in your scenes, and we must go to dress for early dinner. The rehearsals are called for six-thirty. Thank you for—for being my friend." As she rose from the sand Miss Adair held out her hand to Mr. Height, with the friendliness and confidence in her eyes that had smoothed over other rough, though not so rough, places of the same character in her young life.

"That's some kid and there are lots like her. I've got to halt sooner or later," Mr. Height muttered to himself as he dressed for his early dinner. "I'm going to put this fool play across for her, too." There are a few women who distill loyalty out of declined passion; but not many. They make their mark on their generation.

The dress rehearsals of a play are varied in finish and intensity, but the variety which Mr. William Rooney conducted was of the most brilliant, and he expected them to go as well as the opening night. He made small allowance for the strangeness of lights, scenery, and costuming, and that allowance was only for time, not in smoothness. As he willed, his cast generally performed. The cast of "The Purple Slipper" was of experienced actors, and he felt certain that they would meet his expectations. At six-thirty o'clock he seated himself in the middle seat of the sixth row center, looked around to see that the electrician and the costumer were at hand to catch any criticism he wished to make, and in a crisp hard voice that exploded like a cannon he called up the curtain.