"Mr. Height wants me to go and have luncheon with him and tell him about the play. He's hungry, and so am I. Can you spare me if I'm working while I'm eating? May I go?" Mr. Vandeford rose to his feet quickly, and a great Broadway star was in closer danger of descending head-first from a six-story window upon that thoroughfare than he ever knew. Then "The Purple Slipper" rose and demanded its chance of success with Gerald Height as "drag" and the tragedy was averted. "Run along, children, and don't spill your milk on your bibs," he answered them, with a dissembling smile that would have done credit to Mr. Height himself when upon the boards with Miss Hawtry. They departed in great spirits, and Mr. Vandeford noticed that Mr. Height had not been at all concerned as to how his manager's inner man would be served. Thereupon Mr. Vandeford propped his feet upon the desk, got out one of the most evil of the cigars he kept in a drawer of his desk for just such crises, and went into communion with himself for ten minutes. Upon that communion broke Mr. Dennis Farraday, who got the full force of it. "I came to pick up you and Miss Adair to go out in the park to luncheon. It's cooler there. Where is she?" were the words with which Mr. Vandeford's partner in the production of "The Purple Slipper" greeted him. "She has gone out to luncheon with a damned tango lizard," was the disturbed and disturbing answer his courtesy received. "What do you mean?" demanded Mr. Farraday, bristling. "She met Gerald Height a half-hour ago, here in this office, and then went out to luncheon with him," was Mr. Vandeford's answer to Mr. Farraday's bristling. "Without consulting you?" "No! I consented all right enough." "Why didn't you tell her if you didn't want her to go with him?" "See here, Denny, I want to ask you if anything in my past life makes you think that I am a proper old hen to have a downy little chicken thrust right under my wing for safe keeping, whether I hatched her or not?" Mr. Vandeford demanded, and his rage was so perfectly impersonal and perplexed that Mr. Farraday sat down to go into the matter to his rescue. "What do you mean, Van?" he asked in a calm voice and manner that were most grateful to Mr. Vandeford. "Just this: Here's a girl come up here, from a place where a girl is guarded like a pearl of great price, into the muck and excitement of the getting together of a Broadway production in which she is directly interested. I don't know what to do. If I spend my time hovering over her, her show will go cold and break her. She's poor. I told her as much of what she is in for as I dared and still she wants to stay and see it all through, demands to stay and be let in for the whole thing. What'll we do?" "Suppose she'd go with me up to visit the mater and be motored down to participate in--in expurgated moments?" asked Mr. Farraday, as he ruffled his hair into a huge plume on the top of his head.