“As I told you,” he remarked.

“It never got to Belasco,” said Bambi, confidently.  “If it had, he would have seen its possibilities.”

“Is something the matter?” inquired the Professor.

“Belasco has refused Jarvis’s play.”

“So.  He didn’t like that abominable woman any better than I did.”

“She is not abominable!” from Jarvis.

“Be quiet, you two, and let me think.”

“If you would learn concentration you would not need quiet in which to think,” protested her parent.

“Oh, if I would learn to be a camel I wouldn’t need a hump,” returned Bambi, shortly.

“I don’t think a hump would be becoming to you,” mused the Professor, turning back to his book.

“We’ll send it to Parke, Jarvis.”

“What’s the use?”

“Don’t be silly.  Every manager in New York shall see that play before we stop.  We will send it to his wife.  Maybe she will read it.”

“Do as you like about it,” he answered, with superb impersonality.

She took his advice and got it off at once, addressed to the actress.  In a week came a letter in reply saying that Miss Harper would like to talk to Mr. Jocelyn about the play, and making an appointment at her house two days later.

This letter threw them into great excitement.  Jarvis protested, first, that he could not be interrupted at his present work, which interested him.  Bambi pooh-poohed that excuse.  Then he said he had never talked to an actress, and he had heard they were a fussy lot.  She would probably want him to change the play; as he would not do that, there was no use seeing the woman.  Bambi informed him that if Miss Harper would get the play produced, it would pay Jarvis to do exactly what she wanted done.  Then he protested he hated New York.  He didn’t want to go back there.  Bambi finally lost her temper.

“If you are going to act like a balky horse, I give you up.  Until you get started, you will have to do a great many things you will not like, but if I were a man, I would never let any obstacles down me.”

“When can I get a train?” meekly.

“You can take the same train we took before, to-morrow morning.”

A great light broke for Jarvis.

“I can’t go.  I haven’t any money.”

“I have.  I’ll lend it to you.”

“I must owe you thousands now.”

“Not quite.  We can do this all right.”

“Have you got it all down?”

“In the Black Maria,” she nodded.

So the long and the short of it was that Jarvis went off to New York again.  No martyr ever approached the stake with a more saddened visage than he turned upon Bambi as the train pulled out.  She waved her hand at him, smiling pleasantly, but he was sorrowful to the last glimpse.

“Poor old baby!” she laughed.  “He shall stay in New York a while.  He is getting too dependent on mamma.”