Several hours later a very interesting scene was enacted in two tiny adjoining rooms under the roof of the Y. W. C. A., with Miss Adair and Miss Lindsey as the princ.i.p.als.
"If you take away all that net there won"t be any waist left to the dress. Don"t!" pleaded Miss Adair, as Miss Lindsey stood over her with determined scissors.
"I"m making it absolutely perfect, and you can"t tell by looking down on it. You"ll have to trust me," answered Miss Lindsey, with pins in her mouth, as she snipped away a funny little tucker of common new net with which Miss Elvira Henderson of Adairville, Kentucky, had for the sake of her spinster convictions ruined a triumph she had accomplished directly out of "Feminine Fashions" and the ancestral trunk.
"Will it be--be modest?" demanded Miss Adair.
"A lot more modest than having that ugly mosquito netting telling everybody that you are not willing to have them see your marvelous neck and arms except through its meshes. n.o.body will think you know you"ve got "em, if you show them like everybody else; but they"ll think you think you are a peep-show if you cover them half up." And as she spoke Miss Lindsey gave another daring rip and snip. Her philosophy struck home.
"That"s every word true," agreed Miss Adair, with relief. "I"ll just forget about my skin there, as I do about that on my face and hands and n.o.body will notice me at all."
"That"s it. Skin is no treat to New York, and n.o.body will look at you twice." Miss Lindsey had a struggle to keep her voice and manner unconcerned enough, as she surveyed her finished product and saw that from under her hands would go forth a sensation. In the old ivory satin with its woven rosebuds and cream rose-point, above which rose pearly shoulders and a neck bearing a small, proud head, with close waves of heavy black hair, Miss Adair was like a dainty, luscious, tropical fruit that is more beautiful than its own flower. "How an old maid in a country town made that dress I don"t see!" Miss Lindsey added reflectively.
"It was you, who unmade it," answered Miss Adair with grat.i.tude. "I wish you were going, too," she added as she nestled to the taller girl for a perfumed second.
"I"m going to luncheon with you and Mr. Farraday to-morrow," answered Miss Lindsey, with a pleased laugh at Miss Adair"s sudden clinging that indicated her sincerity in not wishing to leave her alone.
"Oh, lovely! And Mr. Height will be with us too, for I promised to have luncheon with him again," she exclaimed, as Miss Lindsey began to insert her into an evening wrap made of a priceless old Paisley shawl which "Fashions" had also tempted Miss Elvira to desecrate with her scissors.
"Gerald Height?" asked Miss Lindsey, and her eyes first snapped and then smouldered. "Where did he get in on--where did you meet him? Does Mr.
Vandeford know about it and--"
"I met him in Mr. Vandeford"s office. He"s in "The Purple Slipper," and I went to luncheon with him to-day. I meant to tell you about it, and meeting Mr. David, but Mr. Vandeford told me to get a nap and I thought I--"
Here the speaking-trumpet in the hall informed Miss Lindsey that Mr.
Vandeford was waiting for Miss Adair below, and she had to let her treasure depart from her.
"I wonder just how straight G.o.dfrey Vandeford is," she mused, as she picked up the discarded tucker of coa.r.s.e netting. "The poor kid! I wish she was at home hidden behind Miss Elvira"s skirts. Hawtry and a girl like that! d.a.m.n men!"
CHAPTER V
It may be that in the long life of Mr. G.o.dfrey Vandeford he had pa.s.sed a more perturbed evening than that on which he led his protege, the author of "The Purple Slipper," to her debut under the white lights of Broadway, but he could not recall the occasion. His grilling had begun while he waited for his charge to descend in the lobby of the Y. W. C.
A. and it ended--
"We are delighted to have Miss Adair stay with us while her play is being rehea.r.s.ed," a very pleasant young woman, with a trim figure, kind and wise eyes, and gray-sprinkled hair, remarked to him after she had whistled the fact of his arrival above. "When such men as you, Mr.
Vandeford, begin to put on clean historical plays, many of our anxieties will be over. I look on each musical show that appears on Broadway as a personal enemy."
"I am glad indeed, Madam, that we are going to claim you as a friend of "The Purple Slipper,"" Mr. Vandeford answered, with his most pleasant smile. Somehow the sight and sound of that executive young woman in charge of his young author gave him a calmness that he needed, and his confidence shone in his face.
"We are deeply interested in Miss Adair, for we have had influential letters sent us about her, and of course we are looking forward with eagerness to seeing her play. She is such a dear child!"
The influential letters and the increased warmth in the young woman"s tone in speaking about his author drew Mr. Vandeford still nearer to her, both in body and in spirit. He leaned slightly against the desk and smiled again.
"May I send you seats for some night the first week of "The Purple Slipper"?" he asked, with the greatest deference. And it must be recorded that in making the offer Mr. Vandeford was not bidding for the distinction conferred on him in the next few seconds.
"That will be delightful," exclaimed the young woman. "And, Mr.
Vandeford, here is a latch-key to the front door, to use to-night if you and Miss Adair are a little later than midnight in coming home. Remember to give it to her after you have put her inside the door and tell her to hang it on the rack opposite the number of her room. There she comes now!"
Mr. Vandeford accepted the latch-key of the Y. W. C. A. with awe and looked at it as he would have looked at a decoration handed him by the Metropolitan governors. Then he glanced up and beheld Miss Adair displaying herself to his new-found friend.
"You are very pretty, my dear," she was saying with an affectionate smile. "Just let me put a pin here in this fold of lace," and expertly she reefed up the last fold of rose-point that Miss Lindsey had snipped down in a hurried finish of her remodeling. Strange to say Mr.
Vandeford felt still more further drawn to his young Christian a.s.sociation friend.
"Now run along, both of you, and have a pleasant evening," she said to them as she turned to answer the telephone.
"That girl is an extremely delightful person," Mr. Vandeford remarked, while he and Valentine were tucking Miss Adair under the linen robe in the car.
"I"m so glad you are getting used to the Y. W. C. A.," Miss Adair answered, giving him a delighted smile as he seated himself beside her while Valentine started the car up the avenue. "Mr. Height said it was like being forced to go to church in a strange town and getting into somebody"s cozy corner by mistake."
"I wish I were married to that girl, to-night," Mr. Vandeford exclaimed out of the sudden rush of anxiety that had overtaken him by this fledgling author"s mention of his leading man.
"Then who would be taking me out, out on Broadway?" asked Miss Adair with a little laugh that had a more distinctly friendly note in it than it had before held for him.
"Both of us," replied Mr. Vandeford, with an answering laugh that sounded much too young in his own ears. "You"ll need two."
"Am I going to have as many dreadful things happen to me to-night as I was going to have when I met Mr. Corbett and Mr. Benjamin David and Mr.
Height and the other theatrical people? Am I being warned again?" Mr.
Vandeford accepted the teasing and laughed at himself.
"My wings are up. Go out and scratch for yourself."
"Not very far, though," Miss Adair answered. Mr. Vandeford was not sure that she moved a fraction of an inch nearer to him, but he hoped so. "I feel just the same about you as I do about Roger and I like to be going with you--into--into danger."
"Who"s Roger?" questioned Mr. Vandeford.
"He"s my brother, who treats me as you do. It"s fun for a woman to be frightened dreadfully when she is with a man she likes." Again there was that uncertainty as to whether Miss Adair fluttered a fraction of an inch in his direction, and for the life of him Mr. Vandeford could not say whence had flown all the many ways he would have commanded ordinarily for the finding out if such were the case.
"A frightened woman is often rather--rather deadly to a man," he answered before he could stop himself. The habit of speaking out directly to Miss Adair was growing on him, he perceived, and it alarmed him.
"Into what danger are you taking me now?" asked Miss Adair with a fluty, merry laugh.
"We are going with Mr. Farraday and Miss Hawtry to see the Big Show and to the Grove Garden on the roof afterward for supper. Just a slow, usual sort of an evening, but Denny thought it would be fun for you to see the Big Show and the Big Feed and the Big Dance by way of initiation,"
Mr. Vandeford answered, with an entire lack of enthusiasm.
"I wanted to see what you wanted me to see this first night," Miss Adair said with the affectionate frankness of six years going on seven. "What would that be?"
"We"ll see it to-morrow night," Mr. Vandeford answered her, and this time the tenderness in his voice surprised him and he considered it entirely unjustifiable.
"Mr. Height was going to take me to see Maude Adams, but I know he"ll put it off again when I tell him that you want me to--"
"No, don"t! Let Height get Maude Adams out of his system, for Heaven"s sake," snapped Mr. Vandeford, this time in unjustifiable temper.
"Why, what is--" Miss Adair was asking of Mr. Vandeford in positive alarm when Valentine stopped before the blazing doorway of the Big Show.
A functionary seven feet tall opened the door of the car and all but literally extracted them by force, for he was anxious to repeat the operation on the occupants of the car chugging behind them.