“Well, well,” said Judge Vandyne, as he came into the drawing-room with us after dinner, “young Crittenden is really getting to goal on that farm question.  I’m glad you sent me that report—­it set some big things in motion.  I’ll tell you about it when I get you alone,” he added, under his breath.  And that was another time that made me feel as if I were a baby that ought to be sliced up to be divided.  As it was, Peter got me first, and I don’t blame him for being in agony.  That is, I didn’t blame Peter, but neither do I blame Farrington, now that I have talked to him.  This was Peter’s tale of woe: 

“Stolen, it is absolutely stolen from me, Betty, and I am helpless to protect the child of my brain,” he began.  The judge and Mabel had at last left us alone, probably because they hesitated to have Peter commit patricide and fratricide, if those are the right terms for sister and father murder.

“How, Peter?” I asked, taking his hand with deep sympathy.

“Betty, since the first three rehearsals I am not allowed even in the theater, and Farrington is a brute.  I do not know what he is doing to my play, but I do know that he was at work on a horrible laugh in the first part of the first act that I did not intend at all.  The leading woman is coarse, with no soul, and the star is a great hulking ass.  I am wild and nobody sympathizes with me.  Father has talked to Farrington, and that is why he wired to you.  Oh, I know he wired or you wouldn’t have come up to this inferno at this time of the year.  That is one kindness he did me—­it is a comfort to me—­oh, Betty.”  And Peter put his head down on my arm that was next him and sobbed, as the Byrd does when anything happens to one of his “little ones.”

I didn’t blame Peter at all, for that play was his “little one” and his first.  I just took it out in hating and vilifying Farrington, until I got Peter much comforted, even interested in hearing about the splendid price Sam had got for the north-field rye.  Then it was time for us to go to bed, and I suppose it was best that it was too late for Mabel to come into my room to tell me her version of Peter’s troubles.  For that one night I sympathized fully with him.  The next morning I was shown another side of the question.  And I felt decidedly different about Mr. Farrington when he talked to me for a little while, alone before dinner the next day, and after Judge Vandyne had also had me in solitary conversation.

“You see, my dear young lady,” said Mr. Farrington, with that twin-star smile in his eyes I have mentioned, “the very wonderful nature that grows and flowers such an exquisite young first play as this of our young friend’s, is the undoing of the work and the producer, unless he is a heartless old brute like the one to whom you are at present talking.”

“Oh, I don’t think you are that now, not at all.  I—­I think you are wonderful, and I trust you with the play even though you haven’t told me anything about what you are doing to it,” I exclaimed in great confidence and enthusiasm.