"Mr. Carpenter," the elderly actress began, in her usual haughtily dignified manner, "how do you think I ought to dress this part in the first act? She's a house-keeper, isn't she? So I suppose I ought to wear an apron." The young dramatist expressed his belief that perhaps an apron would be a proper thing for the house-keeper to wear in the first act. "But not a cap, I hope?" urged Mrs. Castleman. Carpenter doubted if a cap would be necessary. "Thank you," said Mrs. Castleman. "You see, I have always hitherto been associated with the legitimate, and I really don't quite know what to do with this sort of thing." Then she suddenly paused, only to break out again impetuously: "Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Carpenter, really I did not mean to imply that this charming play of yours is not legitimate--" The dramatic author laughed. "You needn't apologize," he declared; "I'm inclined to think that 'Touch and Go' is so illegitimate now that its own parents can't recognize it!" At last the rehearsal of the second act began, the two authors sitting at the little table with the stage-manager. Sherrington consulted them once or twice in regard to the omission of a line here and there. "Cut it down to the bone when you can--that's what I say," he explained; "what you cut out can't make people yawn." But once he stopped the rehearsal to suggest that a speech be written in. "You've got to make that complication mighty clear," he declared, "and this is the place to do it, I think. If you want them to understand that Dresser here is going to mistake Marvin for Fostelle in the next scene, you had better give him another line now to lead up to it." The two authors consulted hastily, and Carpenter, drawing out a note-book and a pencil, hurriedly wrote a sentence, which he showed to Brackett. "That'll do it," said Sherrington; and he read it aloud to Dresser, who borrowed Carpenter's pencil and wrote in the line on the manuscript of his part, wondering aloud whether he should ever remember it on the first night. A few minutes later Sherrington again interrupted the actors to insist that the sunset effect should be adjusted carefully to accompany the spoken dialogue. "I want a soft, rosy tinge on Fostelle in this scene," he explained. "Quite right," laughed the black-eyed star; "that ought to be becoming to my style of beauty." "And I want it to contrast with the blue moonlight in the scene with Marvin," said the stage-manager. "Quite right again," Miss Daisy Fostelle commented. "I'll take the centre of the stage, and you will order calciums for one!" "We had better go back to your entrance, I think," Sherrington decided, "and take the whole scene over." The actors and actresses obediently resumed the positions they had occupied when Miss Daisy Fostelle made her first appearance in that act. The cue for her entrance was given, and she came forward with a burst of artificial laughter.