Blue-grass and Broadway

by Maria Thompson Daviess

"Will you trust me?" asked Mr. Vandeford. There was an eagerness in his voice and smile that again made the Violet glance at him and then at Mr. Dennis Farraday. The latter was beaming with mirth at the dilemma of feeding the young author who was so frankly scattering her hay-seeds on the metropolitan atmosphere. At that instant Miss Hawtry made a momentous decision.

"Trust Mr. Vandeford and you can't go wrong," she advised with peaches and cream in her voice, and for some unknown reason Mr. Vandeford would have been glad to twist the creamy throat from which issued the creamy voice. Instead, he turned, calmly summoned the head waiter, and went into a conference with him in a few very discreet words, which the rest could not hear, though there was no sign of any intention of keeping the consultation from them.

"I think it will be wonderful not to know until I taste it and maybe not then!" exclaimed the author, with another of her sea-gray, long-lashed glances of worshiping admiration at Mr. Vandeford, the eminent Broadway producer who was putting a great star into her play based on the adventures of an ancestress.

Of course the situation was dangerous to both Mr. Vandeford and his author, but who was to blame?

And the jolly, impromptu luncheon-party was not the kind of episode that could soon be forgotten by any of the guests. The unknown food for the author was served by the head waiter himself, and he refused to answer questions as to its origin or component parts, even when urged by Mr. Dennis Farraday. The expression on Miss Lindsey's face after her encounter with the steak and mushrooms, served with an exalted baked potato, was one of decided relaxation. The look of affection in her eyes as she glanced at the author who had dragged her into this food situation rivaled the suddenly rooted admiration which beamed in the eyes of Mr. Dennis Farraday and which put Miss Hawtry alertly on watch, so much so that Mr. Godfrey Vandeford was privileged to lean back in his chair behind a mist of cigarette-smoke and let his eyes gleam where they listed.

"Now tell us just how you happened to think of all the wonderful things in your play, Miss Adair, specially that dinner situation," Mr. Dennis Farraday urged. He was lighting Miss Hawtry's cigarette, to the intense, though concealed, interest and astonishment of Miss Adair of Adairville, Kentucky. He thus asked sincerely and interestedly the usual question that the unsophisticated fires at an author at the first opportunity and which the author, no matter how sophisticated, really enjoys answering.

And thereupon followed the story of the old letters in the trunk, with the mortgage only so lightly and proudly alluded to that the hearts of the listeners were decidedly touched, told by the author with the delighted enthusiasm that their sympathy warranted.

"And so you see, since it couldn't be oil-wells or gold mines it had to be the play," she ended, quoting herself in her conversation with the faithful Roger, who was at that moment following his plow with his mind on the straight furrows and his heart in New York.

"You are a precious darling, and your play must succeed!" said Miss Lindsey impulsively at the end of the recital, and then she quickly glanced at Mr. Godfrey Vandeford to see if he resented her taking this affectionate liberty with his distinguished author. She found that eminent producer not at home to her glance; he was lost in contemplation of tears that hung on the long black lashes that veiled Miss Adair's gray eyes and a little quiver that manifested itself on her red lips. Then she shook off the tears by lifting those long lashes so that she could look straight into his eyes with a smile of absolute confidence in his intention and ability to remove from her life forever all of her distress, which was alone poverty in the concrete, by being the successful producer of her wonderful play. Men of Godfrey Vandeford's type admit many strange fires and their votaries into the outer temple of their hearts, but they keep the inner shrine tightly surrounded by asbestos curtains. However, there is always one, and one only, closely guarded entrance through which the ultimate woman must slip in an unguarded moment. Mr. Godfrey Vandeford would never have thought of being on any particular guard against the author of a play in purple ribbons entitled "The Renunciation of Rosalind," but he knew almost instantly that something dire had happened to him as he sat and writhed at the thought of his plans for the extinction of that piece of dramatic art, which he had not even read. The whole sophisticated world has decided that there is no such thing as love at first sight, except the biological scientists and they know and can prove that such a thing does exist and that it is a worker of wonders. And dire pain is one of its reactions.

But all agony comes to an end and so did Mr. Vandeford's. Miss Hawtry, who had been so busy in her own mind with her own schemes that she had no time to listen to Miss Adair's, picked up her gloves from beside her final coffee-cup, and pulled the fine-meshed veil down over her beautiful, though slightly snubbed, nose as a signal for a separation of the group of feasters.