"No," said Patricia, as she settled herself on the grass beside Roger, with the valuable sugar balanced tenderly upon her knee. "He told me that he would let it stand just as it was for three months until October first, but after that we would have to—to tell—Grandfather and move," a quiver came into Patricia's soft voice that had in it the patrician, slurring softness that can only come from the throat of a grand dame sprung from the race which has dominated blue-grass pastures. "Doctor Healy says it won't be long but—but now he'll—he'll die in his own home that Grandmother built where he fought off the Indians. Her play has saved us."
"I had fixed it to run until I make my crops," said Roger, with a choke in his voice that was a rich masculine accompaniment to Patricia's.
"The play will have been running six weeks by that time, and I can pay most of it off. A hundred thousand a year is almost ten thousand a month and—"
"But all plays don't succeed, Pat, honey, and—"
"The 'Times Magazine' said that Godfrey Vandeford had never had a failure, and didn't you read that he wants to star Violet Hawtry in it? She was 'Dear Geraldine.' How could it fail?" Patricia was positively haughty toward Roger's timorousness.
"That's so," admitted Roger, convinced. "And we can easy get by on the two fifty until October, especially with the garden I am going to raise. I'm no Godfrey Vandeford, but I'm a first-class producer—of potatoes and onions and cabbage and turnip greens and corn. In these war times a potato producer ranks with any old producer."
"But I won't be able to leave all of the two hundred and fifty to use this summer. I'll have to take some of it with me."
"With you where?" demanded Roger.
"To New York. Do you suppose even Mr. Godfrey Vandeford would undertake to produce a play without the author there to help him?" Patricia's scorn of Roger's lack of sound reasoning about theatrical matters was hurled at him pitilessly.
"Of course not," admitted Roger hurriedly. "You can take the whole two hundred and fifty and I'll look after the Major and Jeff."