Blue-grass and Broadway

by Maria Thompson Daviess

"You are one good sport," was the reply that he made her straight from the shoulder, for the thought of a perfectly beautiful girl going to bed in the Y. W. C. A. and covering up her head and ears from the bright lights of her first night in old Manhattan just to give a strange and reverenced man the pleasure of introducing her to the old city made a profound impression upon him. "To-morrow night we'll wake up things on Broadway. I'll telephone you in the morning to let you know how the play is going and to see if there is anything I can do for you. Now you must all go and let me get busy."

"Yes, this is just about the hour that hats begin to bite well," assented Mr. Farraday, as he removed the girls down to his car with no thought or question as to whether his services would be needed in the enterprise in which he had embarked with Mr. Vandeford.

"Now for it, Pops!" said Mr. Vandeford as the door closed behind his co-workers in the production of "The Purple Slipper," whose work at that moment was to play at a distance from his labor. "I'm going to read that play, and nothing short of something that will injure its prospects if neglected by me must disturb me. When I'm done I'll make plans with you. It will take me several hours, and you stand by every second of the time. Get me?"

"Yes, Mr. Vandeford, sir," answered Mr. Adolph Meyers, and he shut his door into the outer office just as Mr. Vandeford closed his own with a bang.

Then for three hours or more, while the sun sank behind the Palisades and the white lights flashed up from Broadway beneath his window like bits of futile challenges to the dying light of day, Mr. Godfrey Vandeford went through the supreme agony of a long life on Broadway, and was paid in full for every double-cross he had administered to a confrère. He read "The Purple Slipper" and groaned aloud from page to page. He began its perusal sitting erect in his chair, and he ended it hunched over its pages spread on his desk with his head in his hands, his fingers desperately clutching his shock of gray-sprinkled hair. Then in a complete collapse he flung himself back in his chair, elevated his feet to the edge of the desk, and began literally to devour the smoke of a small black cigar. For half an hour he sat motionless, as was his habit when fighting all preliminary battles, and his eyes seemed to be seeing the big old monster city open its thousand gleaming eyes and change its roar of the day to an incessant purr of a night-stalking beast, but in reality he was seeing and hearing a month into the future, and the spectacle thus pre-visioned was the first night of "The Purple Slipper" on Broadway. Then very suddenly he came back into his conscious self and went into action. He rang the buzzer for Mr. Adolph Meyers.

"Pops, get Grant Howard on the wire and ask him to come around here as quick as he can make it. If he talks straight wait an hour for him, if he's thick-tongued go after him yourself. Get him! Now put me on the wire with Rooney if you can find him, and make appointments with [Lindenberg] for scenery at eleven in the morning. Ask Corbett to send an artist to talk costumes for a period play at eleven-thirty, and have Gerald Height here at twelve sharp. Don't forget to engage that good-looking youngster—Leigh, I think is the name—even if you have to give him a hundred advance. That's all for the present. Get Rooney for me." Mr. Vandeford turned to his desk and began making rapid notes on a pad with a huge, black, press pencil. For five minutes he spread his thoughts upon the paper in great smudges; then his telephone rang, and he took up the receiver:

. . . . . .

"Yes, this is Mr. Vandeford speaking. Hello, Billy!"

. . . . . .

"That new Hawtry play is beginning to promise something. I'm delaying it a week, and I want you to come into it with your sleeves rolled up. We may make a sure-fire hit of it."