"Here's your check, child, and keep a good grip on Grant, so he can't get started toward East River as he did last time," Mr. Vandeford said as he handed an already prepared check to the enraged girl. She was dumb for a second, no longer. "I was going to leave it for five hundred, you old white-skinned bluffer with your goose-grease, strong arm," she finally blurted out, and in a twinkling of her bright eyes her good-nature had returned. "Say, that is some play now, and I wish you'd let me play a dance girl at that dinner-party. I'd do it refined." There was a queer little appeal in the mobile young face. "I'd like to doll up like a lady." "I'll think that over, Mazie," answered Mr. Vandeford. "A song and dance from you might go all right." "Gimme a call, will you? I'll be on the job with my guzzler for a week now. I got to get him past, for he's some meal-ticket when times is dull." As Mazie disposed of the check in her stocking, a degree of affectionate anxiety for the condition of Mr. Grant Howard showed in her face for the fraction of a second, then disappeared as she looked at Mr. Adolph Meyers. "Come on and get my wad from where I've put it, if you dare, Dolph," she challenged, then laughed, as the imperturbable Mr. Meyers both ignored and showed her to the door with all courtesy. And as he lay on his bed reading over the Howard manuscript of "The Purple Slipper," which had just returned to him after a twenty-four hour overhauling and annotation for action by Mr. William Rooney, the stage director with the top price, Mr. Vandeford said to Mr. Adolph Meyers, who sat at a table beside the bed, taking down and inserting notes into the manuscript as they sprang from Mr. Vandeford's brain, almost before they got past his lips: "No wonder Mazie could see herself in this show, Pops! Grant has pepped it up almost to her standard. Whee-ugh!" With this whistle Mr. Vandeford turned page twenty of the first act and handed it over to Mr. Meyers, who began to devour it with eyes that took in almost the whole page at a glance. "It is a snap-shot of Miss Hawtry he has made, Mr. Vandeford, sir. Mr. Howard has never done better." "Yes, that's what he intended to do, but I'm going to clean it out a bit. Run an insert of the scene on page five to seven and a half out of Miss Adair's manuscript. It is just as good and a little--little more--say, Pops, cut out seven lines on page fourteen from the second down, and take this from me instead." Mr. Vandeford closed his eyes and dictated a bit of dialogue between two of the minor characters of "The Purple Slipper," which cleared up a point Mr. Howard and Mr. Rooney and the original author had all left at loose ends. As he dictated, Mr. Meyers wrote on the blank page opposite the lines, and made some cabalistic signs for insertion.