Now, I ain't in love with tea at any time of the day except for supper, and I sure would pass it up just after breakfast, but I don't know as I'd break my neck to get away from it, same's the old gent was doin'. The minute he gets a look at the wagon comin' his way he does some lively side-steppin'. Then he jumps behind a bush and hides, givin' me the sign not to let on.

The long-legged guy knew his business, though. He came straight on, like he was followin' a scent, and the first thing old Whitey knows he's been run down. He gives in then, just as if he'd been tagged.

"Babbitt," says he, "I had you hull down at one time, didn't I?"

But either Babbitt was too much out of breath, or else he wasn't the talkative kind, for he never says a word, but just opens up the top of the cart and proceeds to haul out some bottles and a glass. First he spoons out some white powder into a tumbler. Then he pours in some water and stirs it with a spoon. When the mess is done he sticks it out to the old gent. The old one never lifts a finger, though.

"Salute, first, you frozen-faced scum of the earth!" he yells. "Salute, sir!"

Babbitt made a stab at salutin' too, and mighty sudden.

"Now, you white-livered imitation of a man," says the old gent, "you may hand over that villainous stuff! Bah!" and he takes a sniff of it.

Babbitt keeps his eyes glued on him until the last drop was down, then he jumped. Lucky he was quick on the duck, for the glass just whizzed over the top of his head. While he was stowin' the things away the old fellow let loose. Say, you talk about a cussin', I'll bet you never heard a string like that. It wasn't the longshoreman's kind. But the way he put together straight dictionary words was enough to give you a chill. It was the rattlin' style he had of rippin' 'em out, too, that made it sound like swearin'. If there was any part of that long-legged guy that he didn't pay his respects to, from his ears to his toe-nails, I didn't notice it.

"It's the last time you get any of that slush into me, Babbitt," says he. "Do you hear that, you peanut-headed, scissor-shanked whelp?"

"Ten-thirty's the next dose, Commodore," says he as he starts off.

"It is, eh, you wall-eyed deck swab?" howls the Commodore. "If you mix any more of that infant food for me I'll skin you alive, and sew you up hind side before. Do you hear that, you?"

I was wearin' a broad grin when the old Commodore turns around to me.

"If that fellow keeps this up," says he, "I shall lose my temper some day. Ever drink medicated milk, eh? Ugh! It tastes the way burnt feathers smell. And I'm dosed with it eight times a day! Think of it, milk! But what makes me mad is to have it ladled out to me by that long-faced, fish-eyed food destroyer, whose only joy in life is to hunt me down and gloat over my misery. Oh, I'll get square with him yet, sir; I swear I will."

"I wish you luck," says I.

"Who are you, anyway?" says he.

"Nobody much," says I, "so there's two of us. I'm livin' in the cottage across the way."

"The deuce you say!" says he. "Then you're Shorty McCabe, aren't you?"

"You're on," says I. "How'd you guess it?"

Well, it seems one of my reg'lars was a partner of his son-in-law, who owned the big place, and they'd been talkin' about me just the day before. After that it didn't take long for the Commodore and me to get a line on each other, and when I finds out he's Roaring Dick, the nervy old chap that stood out on the front porch of his ship all through the muss at Santiago Bay and hammered the daylights out of the Spanish fleet, I gives him the hand.

"I've read about you in the papers," says I.

"Not so often as I used to read about you," says he.

And say, inside of ten minutes we was like a couple of G. A. R. vets, at a reunion. Then he told me all about the medicated-milk business.

It didn't take any second sight to see that the Commodore was a gay old sport. He'd been on the European station for three years, knockin' around with kings and princes, and French and Russian naval officers that was grand dukes and such when they was ashore; and he'd carried along with him a truck-driver's thirst and the capacity of a ward boss. The fizzy stuff he'd stowed away in that time must have been enough to sail a ship on. I guess he didn't mind it much, though, for he'd been in pickle a long time. It was the seventeen-course night dinners and the foreign cooking that gave him the knockout.

All of a sudden his digester had thrown up the job, and before he knew it he was in a state where a hot biscuit or a piece of fried potato would lay him out on his back for a week. He'd come home on sick leave to visit his daughter, and his rich son-in-law had steered him up against a specialist who told him that if he didn't quit and obey orders he wouldn't last three weeks. The orders was to live on nothin' but medicated milk, and for a man that had been livin' the way he had it was an awful jolt. He couldn't be trusted to take the stuff himself, so they hired valets to keep him doped with it.

"I scared the first one half to death," says the Commodore, "and the next one I bribed to smuggle out ham sandwiches. Then they got this fellow Babbitt to follow me around with that cursed gocart, and I haven't had a moment's peace since. He's just about equal to a job like that, Babbitt is. I make him earn his money, though."

You'd have thought so if you could have seen the old Commodore work up games to throw Babbitt off the track. I put in most of the day watchin' 'em at it, and it was as good as a vaudeville act. About a quarter of an hour before it was time for the dose the valet would come out and begin to look around the grounds. Soon as he'd located the Commodore he'd slide off after his tea wagon. That was just where the old boy got in his fine work. The minute Babbitt was out of sight the Commodore makes a break for a new hidin' place, so the valet has to wheel that cart all over the lot, playin' peek-a-boo behind every bush and tree until he nailed his man.

Now you'd think most anyone with a head would have cracked a joke now and then with the old gent, and kind of made it easy all round. But not Babbitt. He'd been hired to get medicated milk into the Commodore, and that was all the idea his nut could accommodate at one time. He was one of these stiff-necked, cold-blooded flunkies, that don't seem much more human than wooden Indians. He had an aggravatin' way, too, of treatin' the old chap when he got him cornered. He was polite enough, so far as what he had to say, but it was the mean look in his ratty little eyes that grated.

With every dose the Commodore got madder and madder. Some of the names he thought up to call that valet was worth puttin' in a book. It seemed like a shame, though, to stir up the old gent that way, and I don't believe the medicine did him any more good. He took it, though, because he'd promised his daughter he would. Course, I had my own notions of that kind of treatment, but I couldn't see that it was up to me to jump in the coacher's box and give off any advice.

Next mornin' I'd been out for a little leg-work and I was just joggin' into the park again, when I hears all kinds of a ruction goin' on over behind the stonewall. There was screams and yells and shouts, like a Saturday-night riot in Double Alley. I pokes up a giraffe neck and sees a couple of women runnin' across the lawn. Pretty soon what they was chasin' comes into view. It was the Commodore. He was pushin' the tea-wagon in front of him, and in the top of that, with just his legs and arms stickin' out, was Babbitt.

I knew what was up in a minute. He'd lost his temper, just as he was afraid he would, and before he'd got it back again he'd grabbed the valet and jammed him head first into the green cart. But where he was goin' with him was more'n I could guess. Anyway, it was somewhere that he was in a hurry to get to, for the old boy was rushin' the outfit across the front yard for all he was worth.



"Oh, stop him, stop him!" screams one of the women, that I figures out must be the daughter.

"Stop 'im! Stop 'im!" yells the other. She looked like one of the maids.

"I'm no backstop," thinks I to myself. "Besides, this is a family affair."

I'd have hated to have blocked that run, too; for it was doin' me a lot of good, just watchin' it and thinkin' of the bumps Babbitt was gettin', with his head down among the bottles.

I follows along on the outside though, and in a minute or so I sees what the Commodore was aimin' at. Out to one side was a cute little fish-pond, about a hundred feet across, and he was makin' a bee line for that. It was down in a sort of hollow, with nice smooth turf slopin' clear to the edge.

When the Commodore gets half-way down he gives the cart one last push, and five seconds later Mr. Babbitt, with his head still stuck in the wagon, souses into the water like he'd been dropped from a balloon. The old boy stays just long enough to see the splash, and then he keeps right on goin' towards New York.

At that I jumps the stone wall and prepares to do some quick divin', but before I could fetch the pond Babbitt comes to the top, blowin' muddy water out of his mouth and threshin' his arms around windmill fashion. Then his feet touches bottom and he finds he ain't in any danger of bein' drowned. The wagon comes up, too, and the first thing he does is to grab that. By the time I gets there he was wadin' across with the cart, and the women had made up their minds there wa'n't any use fainting.

"Babbitt," says the Commodore's daughter, "explain your conduct instantly. What were you doing standing on your head in that tea-wagon?"

"Please, ma'am, I—I forget," splutters Babbitt, wipin' the mud out of his eyes.

"You forget!" says the lady. And say, anyone that knew the old Commodore wouldn't have to do any guessin' as to who her father was. "You forget, do you? Well, I want you to remember. Out with it, now!"

"Yes, ma'am," says Babbitt, tryin' to prop up his wilted collar. "I'd just give him his first dose for the day, and I'd dodged the glass, when somethin' catches me from behind, throws me into the tea-wagon, and off I goes. But that dose counts, don't it, ma'am? He got it down."

I sees how it was then; Babbitt had been gettin' a commission for every glass of the medicated stuff he pumped into the Commodore.

"Will you please run after my father and tell him to come back," says the lady to me.

"Sorry," says I, "but I'm no antelope. You'd better telegraph him."

I didn't stay to see any more, I was that sore on the whole crowd. But I hoped the old one would have sense enough to clear out for good.

I didn't hear any more from my neighbors all day, but after supper that night, just about dusk, somebody sneaks in through the back way and wabbles up to the veranda where I was sittin'. It was the old Commodore. He was about all in, too.

"Did—did I drown him?" says he.

"You made an elegant try," says I; "but there wasn't water enough."

"Thank goodness!" says he. "Now I can die calmly."

"What's the use dyin'?" says I. "Ain't there no thin' else left to do but that?"

"I've got to," says he. "I can't live on that cursed stuff they've been giving me, and if I eat anything else I'm done for. The specialist said so."

"Oh, well," says I, "maybe he's made a wrong guess. It's your turn now. Suppose you come in and let me have Mother Whaley broil you a nice juicy hunk of steak?"

Say, he was near starved. I could tell that by the way he looked when I mentioned broiled steak. He shook his head, though. "If I did, I'd die before morning," says he.

"I'll bet you a dollar you wouldn't," says I.

That almost gets a grin out of him. "Shorty," says he, "I'm going to risk it."

"It's better'n starving to death," says I.

And he sure did eat like a hungry man. When he'd put away a good square meal, includin' a dish of sliced raw onions and two cups of hot tea, I plants him in an arm chair and shoves out the cigar box. He looks at the Fumadoras regretful.

"They've kept those locked away from me for two weeks," says he, "and that was worse than going without food."

"Smoke up, then," says I. "There's one due you."

"As it will probably be my last, I guess I will," says he.

Honest, the old gent was so sure he'd croak before mornin' that he wanted to write some farewell letters, but he was too done up for that. I tucked him into a spare bed, opened all the windows, and before I could turn out the light he was sawin' wood like a hired man.

He was still workin' the fog horn when I went in to rout him out at five o'clock. It was a tough job gettin' him up, but I got him out of his trance at last.

"Come on," says I, "we've got to do our three miles and have a rub-down before breakfast."

First off he swore he couldn't move, and I guess he was some stiff from his sprint the day before, but by the time he'd got out where the birds was singin', and the trees and grass looked like they'd been done over new durin' the night, I was able to coax him into a dog-trot. It was a gentle little stunt we did, but it limbered the old boy up, and after we'd had a cold shower and a quick rub he forgot all about his joints.

"Well, are you set on keepin' that date in the obituary column, or will we have breakfast?" says I.

"I could eat cold lobscouse," says he.

"Mother Whaley's got somethin' better'n that in the kitchen," says I.

"I suppose this will finish me," says he, tacklin' the eggs and corn muffins.

Now, wouldn't that give you the pip? Why, with their specialists and medicated dope, they'd got the old chap so leery of good straight grub that he was bein' starved to death. And even after I'd got him braced up into something like condition, he didn't think it was hardly right to go on eatin'.

"I expect I ought to go back and start in on that slop diet again," says he.

I couldn't stand by and see him do that, though. He was too fine an old sport to be polished off in any such style. "See here, Commodore," says I, "if you're dead stuck on makin' a livin' skeleton of yourself, why, I throws up me hands. But if you'll stay here for a couple of weeks and do just as I say, I'll put you in trim to hit up the kind of life I reckon you think is worth livin'.

"By glory!" says he, "if you can do that I'll—"

"No you won't," say I. "This is my blow."

Course, it was a cinch. He wa'n't any invalid. There was stuff enough in him to last for twenty years, if it was handled right. He begun to pick up right away. I only worked him hard enough to make the meals seem a long ways apart and the mattress feel good. Inside of a week I had the red back in his cheeks, and he was chuckin' the medicine ball around good and hard, and tellin' me what a scrapper he used to be when he first went to the cadet mill, down to Annapolis. You can always tell when these old boys feel kinky—they begin to remember things like that. Before the fortnight was up he wasn't shyin' at anything on the bill of fare, and he was hintin' around that his thirst was comin' back strong.

"Can't I ever have another drink?" says he, as sad as a kid leavin' home.

"I'd take as little as I could get along with," says I.

"I'll promise to do that," says he.

He did, too. About the second day after he'd gone back to his son-in-law's place, he sends for me to come over. I finds him walkin' around the grounds as spry as a two-year-old.

"Well," says I, "how did the folks take it?"

He chuckles. "They don't know what to say," says he. "They can't see how a specialist who charges five hundred dollars for an hour's visit can be wrong; but they admit I'm as good as new."

"How's Babbitt?" says I.

"That's why I wanted you to come over," says he. "Now watch." Then he lets out a roar you could have heard ten blocks away, and in about two shakes old wash-day shows up. "Ha! You shark-nosed sculpin!" yells the Commodore. "Where's your confounded tea cart? Go get it, sir."

"Yes, sir; directly, sir," says Babbitt.

He comes trottin' back with it in a hurry.

"Got any of that blasted decayed milk in it?" says the Commodore.

"No, sir," says Babbitt.

"Are you glad or sorry? Speak up, now," says the Commodore.

"I'm glad, sir," says Babbitt, givin' the salute.

"Good!" says the Commodore. "Then open up your wagon and mix me a Scotch high-ball."

And Babbitt did it like a little man.

"I find," says the Commodore, winkin' at me over the top of his glass, "that I can get along with as few as six of these a day. To your very good health, Professor McCabe."

Stand it? Well, I shouldn't wonder. He's a tough one. And ten years from now, if there's another Dago fleet to be filled full of shot holes, I shouldn't be surprised to find my old Commodore fit and ready to turn the trick.



CHAPTER XII

You'd most think after that I'd have cut out the country for a while; but say, I'm gettin' so I can stand a whole lot of real breathin' air. Anyway, I've put the Studio on summer schedule, and every Saturday about noon I pikes out to Primrose Park, to see if me estate's growed any durin' the week.

Well, the last time I does it, I drops off about two stations too soon, thinkin' a little outdoor leg-work would do me good.

It was a grand scheme, and I'd been all right if I'd followed the trolley track along the post-road; but the gasolene carts was so thick, and I got to breathin' so much gravel, that I switches off. I takes a nice-lookin' lane that appears like it might bring me out somewhere near the place I was headin' for; but as I ain't much on findin' my way where they don't have sign-boards at the corners, the first thing I knows I've made so many turns I don't know whether I'm goin' out or comin' back.

It was while I was doin' the stray act, and wonderin' if it was goin' to shower, or was only just bluffin', that I bumps into this Incubator bunch, and the performance begins.

First squint I took I thought somebody'd been settin' out a new kind of shrubbery, and then I sized it up for a lot of umbrella jars that had been dumped there. But pretty soon I sees that it's nothin' but a double row of kids, all dressed the same. There must have been more'n a hundred of 'em, and they was standin' quiet by the side of the road, just as much to home as if that was where they belonged. Now, it ain't the reg'lar thing to find any such aggregation as that on a back lane, and if I'd had as much sense as a family horse in a carryall I'd shied and rambled the other way. But I has to get curious to see what it's all about, so I blazes ahead, figurin' on takin' a good look as I goes by.

At the head of the procession was a lady and gent holdin' some kind of exercises, and as I comes up I notices something familiar about the lady's back hair. She turns around just then, gives a little squeal, and makes for me with both hands out. Sure, it was her—Sadie Sullivan, that was. Well, I knew that Sadie was liable to be floatin' around anywhere in Westchester County, for that seems to be her regular stampin' ground since she got to travelin' with the country house set; but I wasn't lookin' to run across her just then and in that company.

"Oh, Shorty!" says she, "you're a life-saver! I've half a mind to hug you right here."

"If it wa'n't for givin' an exhibition," says I, "I'd lend you the other half. But how does the life-savin' come in? And where'd you collect so many kids all of a size? Is that pop, there?" and I jerks me thumb at the gent.

"Captain Kenwoodie," says Sadie, "I want you to know my friend, Professor McCabe. Shorty, this is Captain Sir Hunter Kenwoodie, of the British war office."

"Woodie," says I, "how goes it?"

"Chawmed to meet you, I'm suah," says he.

"Oh, splash!" says I. "You don't mean it?"

Well, say! he was a star. His get-up was somethin' between that of a mounted cop and the leader of a Hungarian band, and he was as stiff as if he'd been dipped in the glue-pot the day before. I'd heard somethin' about him from Pinckney. He'd drawn plans and specifications for a new forage cap for the British army, and on the strength of that he'd been sent over to the States to inspect belt buckles, or somethin' of the kind. Talk about your cinch jobs! those are the lads that can pull 'em out. On his off days—and he had five or six a week—Woodie'd been ornamentin' the top of tally-hos, and restin' up at such places as Rockywold and Apawamis Arms.

Seems like he'd discovered Sadie, too, and had booked himself for her steady company. From her story it looked like they'd been takin' a little drive around the country, when they ran up against this crowd of kids in checked dresses from the Incubator home. There was a couple of nurses herdin' the bunch, and they'd all been sent up the Sound on an excursion barge, for one of these fresh-air blow-outs that always seem like an invitation for trouble. Everything had gone lovely until the chowder barge had got mixed up with a tow of coal scows and got bumped so hard that she sprung a leak.

There hadn't been any great danger, but the excitement came along in chunks. The crew had run the barge ashore and landed the whole crowd, but in the mix-up one of the women had backed off the gangplank into three feet of water, and the other had sprained an ankle. The pair of 'em was all to the bad when Sadie and the Cap came along and found 'em tryin' to lead their flock to the nearest railroad station.

Course, Sadie had piled right out, loaded the nurses into the carriage, tellin' the driver to find the next place where the cars stopped and come back after the kids with all the buggies he could find, while she and Woodie stood by to see that the Incubators didn't stampede and get scattered all over the lot.

"So, here we are," says Sadie, "with all these children, and a shower coming up. Now, what shall we do and where shall we go?"

"Say," says I, "I may look like an information bureau, but I don't feel the part."

Sadie couldn't get it through her head, though, that I wasn't a Johnny-on-the-spot. Because I'd bought a place somewhere in the county, she thought I could draw a map of the state with my eyes shut. "We ought to start right away," says she.

She was more or less of a prophet, too. That thunder-storm was gettin' busy over on Long Island and there was every chance of its comin' our way. It lets loose a good hard crack, and the Englishman begins to look worried.

"Aw, I say now!" says he, "hadn't I better jog off and hurry up that bloomin' coachman?"

"All right, run along," says Sadie.

You should have seen the start of that run. He got under way like a man on stilts, and he was about as limber as a pair of fire-tongs. But then, them leather cuffs on his legs, and the way his coat hugged the small of his back, wa'n't any help. I was enjoyin' his motions so much that I hadn't paid any attention to the kids, and I guess Sadie hadn't either; but the first we knows they all falls in behind, two by two, hand in hand, and goes trottin' along behind him.

"Stop 'em! Stop 'em!" says Sadie.

"Whoa! Cheese it! Come back here!" I yells.

They didn't give us any more notice, though, than as if we'd been holdin' our breath. The head pair had their eyes glued on the Captain. They were the leaders, and the rest followed like they'd been tied together with a rope. They was all girls and I guess they'd average about five years old. I thought at first they all had on aprons, but now I sees that every last one of 'em was wearin' a life-preserver. They'd tied the things on after the bump, and I suppose the nurses had been too rattled to take 'em off since. Maybe it wa'n't a sight to see them bobbin' up and down!

Woodie, he looks around and sees what's comin' after him, and waves for 'em to go back. Not much. They stops when he stops, but when he starts again they're right after him. He unlimbers a little and tries to break away, but the kids jump into the double-quick and hang to him.

I knew what was up then. They'd sized him up for a cop, and cops was what they was used to. You've seen those lines of Home kids bein' passed across the street by the traffic squad? Well, havin' lost their nurses, and not seein' anything familiar-lookin' about Sadie or me, they'd made up their minds that Woodie was it. They meant to stick to him until something better showed up. Once I got this through my nut, I makes a sprint to the head of the column and gets a grip on the Cap.

"See here, Woodie!" says I, "you're elected. You'll have to stay by the kids until relieved. They've adopted you."

"Aw, I say now," says he, "this is too beastly absurd, y'know. It's a bore. Why, if I don't find some place or other very soon I'll get a wetting."

"You can't go anywhere without those kids," says I; "so come along back with us. We need you in our business."

He didn't like it a little bit, for he'd figured on shakin' the bunch of us; but he had to go, and when he came right-about-face the procession did a snake movement there in the road that would have done credit to the Seventh Regiment.

I'd been lookin' around for a place to make for. Off over the trees toward the Sound was a flag-pole that I reckoned stood on some kind of a buildin' and there was a road runnin' that way.

"We'll mosey down towards that," says I; "but we could make better time, Cap'n, if you'd get your party down to light-weight marchin' order. Suppose you give the command for them to shed them cork jackets."

"Why, really, now," says he, lookin' over the crowd kind of helpless, "I haven't the faintest idea how to do it, y'know."

"Well, it's up to you," says I. "Make a speech to 'em."

Say, that was the dopiest bunch of kids I ever saw. They acted like they wa'n't more'n half alive, standin' there in pairs, as quiet as sheep, waitin' for the word. But that's the way they bring 'em up in these Homes, like so many machines, and they didn't know how to act any other way. Sadie saw it, and dropped down on her knees to gather in as many as she could get her arms around.

"Oh, you poor little wretches!" says she, beginnin' to sniffle.

"Cut it out, Sadie!" says I. "There ain't any time for that. Unbuckle them belts. Turn to, Cap, and get on the job. You're in this."

As soon as Woodie showed 'em what was wanted, though, they skinned themselves out of those canvas sinkers in no time at all. We left the truck in the road, and with the English gent for drum-major, Sadie in the middle, and me playin' snapper on the end, we starts for the flag-pole. I thought maybe it might be a hotel; but when we got where the road opened out of the woods to show us how near the Sound we was, I sees that it's a yacht club, with a lot of flags flyin' and a whole bunch of boats anchored off. About then we felt the first wet spots.

"They've got to take us into that club-house," says Sadie.

We'd got as far as the gates, one of these fancy kind, with a hood top over the posts, like the roof of a summer-house, when the sprinkler was turned on in earnest. Woodie was gettin' rain-drops on his new uniform, and he didn't like it.

"I'll stay here," says he, and bolts under cover.

The Incubator kids swings like they was on a pivot, and piles in after him. There wasn't anything to do then but stop under the gate, seein' as the club-house was a hundred yards or so off. I snaked Woodie out, though, and made him help me range the youngsters under the middle of the roof; and when we'd got 'em packed in four deep, with Sadie squeezed in too, there wa'n't an inch of room for either of us left.

And was it rainin'? Wow! You'd thought four eights had been rung in and all the water-towers in New York was turned loose on us. And the thunder kept rippin' and roarin', and the chain-lightnin' streaked things up like the finish of one of Colonel Pain's exhibits.

"Sing to them!" shouts Sadie. "It's the only way to keep them from being scared to death. Sing!"

"Do you hear that, Woodie?" says I across the top of their heads. "Sing to 'em, you lobster!"

The Captain was standing just on the other side of the bunch. He'd got the front half of him under cover, but there wasn't room for the rest; so it didn't do him much good, for the roof eaves was leakin' down the back of his neck at the rate of a gallon a minute.

"Only fu-fu-fawncy!" says he. "I don't fu-feel like singing, y'know."

"Make a noise like you did then," says I. "Come on, now!"

"But really, I cawn't," says he. "I n-never sing, y'know."

Say, that gave me the backache. "See here, Woodie," says I, lookin' as wicked as I knew how, "you sing or there'll be trouble! Hit 'er up, now!"

That fetched him. He opened his face like he'd swallowed something bitter, made one or two false starts, and strikes up "God save the King." I didn't know the words to that, so I makes a stab at "Everybody Works but Father," and Sadie tackles somethin' else.

For a trio that was the limit. The kids hadn't seemed to mind the thunder and lightnin' a whole lot, but when that three-cornered symphony of ours cut loose they begins to look wild. Some of 'em was diggin' their fists into their eyes and preparin' to leak brine, when all of a sudden Woodie gets into his stride and lets go of three or four notes that sounded as if they might belong together.

That seemed to cheer those youngsters up a lot. One or two pipes up, kind of scared and trembly, but hangin' onto the tune, and the next thing we knew they was all at it, givin' us "My Country 'Tis of Thee" in as fine shape as you'd want to hear. We quit then, and listened. They followed up with a couple of good old hymns and, if I hadn't been afloat from my shoes up, I might have enjoyed the program. It was a good exhibition of nerve, too. Most kids of that size would have gone up in the air and howled blue murder. But they didn't even show white around the gills.

Inside of ten minutes it was all over. The shower had moved off up into Connecticut, where maybe it was wanted worse, and we got our heads together to map out the next act. Sadie had the say. She was for takin' the kids over to the swell yacht club there, and waitin' until the nurses or some one else came to take 'em off our hands. That suited me; but when it came to gettin' Captain Sir Hunter to march up front and set the pace, he made a strong kick.

"Oh, by Jove, now!" says he, "I couldn't think of it. Why, I've been a guest here, y'know, and I might meet some of the fellows."

"What luck!" says Sadie. "That'll be lovely if you do."

"You come along, Woodie," says I. "We've got our orders."

He might have been a stiff-lookin' Englishman before, but he was limp enough now. He looked like a linen collar that had been through the wash and hadn't reached the starch tub. His coat-tails was still drippin' water, and when he walked it sounded like some one was moppin' up a marble floor.

"Only fancy what they'll think!" he kept sayin' to himself as we got under way.

"They'll take you for an anti-race-suicide club," says I; "so brace up."

We hadn't more'n struck the club-house porch, and the steward had rushed out to drive us away, when Sadie gives another one of them squeals that means she's sighted something good.

"Oh, there's the Dixie Girl!" says she.

"You must have 'em bad," says I. "I don't see any girl."

"The yacht!" says she, pointin' to the end of the dock. "That big white one. It's Mrs. Brinley Cubbs' Dixie Girl. You wait here until I see if she's aboard," and off she goes.

So we lined up in front to wait, the Incubators never takin' their eyes off'n Woodie, and him as pink as a sportin' extra, and sayin' things under his breath. Every time he took a hitch sideways the whole line dressed. All hands from the club turned out to see the show, and the rockin'-chair skippers made funny cracks at us.

"Ahoy the nursery!" says one guy. "Where you bound for?"

"Ask popper," says I. "He's got the tickets."

Woodie kept his face turned and his jaw shut, and if he had any friends in the crowd I guess they didn't spot him. I'll bet he wa'n't sorry when Sadie shows up on deck and waves for us to come on.

Mrs. Brinley Cubbs was there, all right. She was a tall, loppy kind of female, ready to gush over anything. As well as I could size up the game, she was one of the near-swells, with plenty of gilt but not enough sense to use it right. Her feelin's were in good workin' order though, and she was willin' to listen to any program that Sadie had on hand.

"Bring the little dears right aboard," says she, "and we'll have them home before dark. Why, Sir Hunter, is it really you?"

"I'm not altogether sure," says Woodie, "whether it's I or not," and he made a dive to get below.

Well, say, that was a yacht and a half, that Dixie Girl! The inside of her was slicker'n any parlor car you ever saw. While they was gettin' up steam, and all the way down to the East river, Mrs. Cubbs had the hired hands luggin' up everything eatable they could find, from chicken salad to ice-cream, and we all took a hand passin' it out to that Incubator bunch.

They knew what grub was, yes, yes! There wasn't any holdin' back for an imitation cop to give the signal. The way they did stow in good things that they'd probably never dreamed about before was enough to make a man wish he had John D.'s pile and Jake Riis's heart. I forgot all about bein' wet, and so did Woodie. To see him jugglin' stacks of loaded plates you'd think he'd graduated from a ham-and factory. He seemed to like it, too, and he was wearin' what passes for a grin among the English aristocracy. By the time we got to the dock at East 34th-st. there was more solid comfort and stomach-ache in that cabin than it'll hold again in a thousand years.

Sadie had me go ashore and telephone for two of them big rubber-neck wagons. That gave us time to get the sleepers woke up and arrange 'em on the dock. Just as we was gettin' the last of the kids loaded in for their ride up to the Home, a roundsman shows up with two cops.

"Where do you kids belong?" he sings out.

With that there comes a howl, and the whole bunch yells:

Hot pertater—cold termater—alligater—Rome! We're the girls from the Incubator Home!

"Caught with the goods!" says he, turnin' to the Cap'n and me. "You're arrested for wholesale kidnappin'. There's a general alarm out for youse."

"Ah, back to the goats!" says I. "You don't think we look nutty enough to steal a whole orphan asylum, do you, Rounds?"

"I wouldn't trust either of you alone with a brick block," says he. "And your side partner with the Salvation Army coat on looks like a yegg man to me."

"Now will you be nice, Cap?" says I.

At this Sadie and Mrs. Cubbs tries to butt in, but that roundsman had a head like a choppin' block. He said the two nurses had come to town and reported that they'd been held up in the woods and that all the kids had been swiped. As Woodie fitted one of the descriptions, we had to go to the station, that was all there was about it.

And say, if the Sarge hadn't happened to have been one of my old backers, we'd have put in the night with the drunk and disorderlies. Course, when I tells me little tale, the Sarge give me the ha-ha and scratches our names off the book. We didn't lose any time either, in hittin' the Studio, where there was a hot bath and dry towels.

But paste this in your Panama: Next time me and Woodie goes out to rescue the fatherless, we takes along our raincoats. We've shook hands on that.



CHAPTER XIII

How's Woodie and Sadie comin' on? Ah, say! you don't want to take the things she does too serious. It's got to be a real live one that interests Sadie. And, anyway, Woodie's willing to take oath that she put up a job on him. So it's all off.

And I guess I ain't so popular with her as I might be. Anyway, I wouldn't blame her, after the exhibition I made the other night, for classin' me with the phonies. It was trouble I hunted up all by myself.

Say, if I hadn't been havin' a dopey streak I'd a known something was about due. There hadn't a thing happened to me for more'n a week, when Pinckney blows into the Studio one mornin', just casual like, as if he'd only come in 'cause he found the door open. That should have put me leary, but it didn't. I gives him the hail, and tells him, he's lookin' like a pink just off the ice.

"Shorty," says he, "how are you on charity?"

"I'm a cinch," says I. "Every panhandler north of Madison Square knows he can work me for a beer check any time he can run me down."

"Then you'll be glad to exercise your talents in aid of a worthy cause," says he.

"It don't follow," says I. "The deservin' poor I passes up. There's too much done for 'em, as it is. It's the unworthy kind that wins my coin. They enjoys it more and has a harder time gettin' it."

"Your logic is good, Shorty," says he, "and I think I agree with your sentiments. But this is a case where charity is only an excuse. The ladies out at Rockywold are getting up an affair for the benefit of something or other, no one seems to know just what, and they've put you down for a little bag punching and club swinging."

"Then wire 'em to scratch the entry," says I. "I don't make any orchestra circle plays that I can dodge, and when it comes to fightin' the leather before a bunch of peacock millinery I renigs every time. I'll put on Swifty Joe as a sub., if you've got to have some one."

Pinckney shook his head at that. "No," says he, "I'll tell Sadie she must leave you off the program."

"Hold on," says I. "Was it Sadie billed me for this stunt?"

He said it was.

"Then I'm on the job," says I. "Oh, you can grin your ears off, I don't care."

Well, that was what fetched me out to Rockywold on a Friday night, when I had a right to be watchin' the amateur try-outs at the Maryborough Club instead. The show wasn't until Saturday evenin', but Pinckney said I ought to be there for the dress rehearsal.

"There's only about a dozen guests there now, so you needn't get skittish," says he.

And a dozen don't go far towards fillin' up a place like Rockywold. Say, if I had the price, I'd like a shack where I could take care of more or less comp'ny without settin' up cot beds, but I'll be blistered if I can see the fun in runnin' a free hotel like that.

These amateur shows are apt to be pretty punk, but I could see that, barrin' myself, there was a fair aggregation of talent on hand. The star was a googoo-eyed girl who did a barefoot specialty, recitin' pomes to music, and accompanyin' herself with a kind of parlor hoochee-coochee that would have drawn capacity houses at Dreamland. Then there was a pretty boy who could do things to the piano, a funeral-faced duck that could tell funny stories, and a bunch of six or eight likely-lookin' ladies and gents who'd laid themselves out to prance through what they called a minuet. Lastly there was me an' Miriam.

She was one of these limp, shingle-chested girls, Miriam was. She didn't have much to say, so I didn't take any particular notice of her. But at the rehearsal I got next to the fact that she could tease music out of a violin in great style. It was all right if you shut your eyes, for Miriam wasn't what you'd call a pastel. She was built a good deal on the lines of an L-road pillar, but that didn't bar her from wearin' one of these short-sleeved square-necked, girly-girly dresses that didn't leave you much in doubt as to her framework.

Yes, Miriam could have stood a few well-placed pads. She'd lived long enough to have found that out, too, but they was missin'. I should guess that Miriam had begun exhibitin' her collar-bones to society about the time poor old John L. fought the battle of New Orleans. Yet when she snuggled the butt end of that violin down under her chin and squinted at you across the bridge, she had all the motions of a high-school girl.

'Course, I didn't dope all this out to myself at the time; for, as I was sayin', I didn't size her up special. But it all came to me afterwards—yes, yes!

The excitement broke loose along about the middle of that first night. I'd turned in about an hour before, and I was poundin' my ear like a circus hand on a Sunday lay-over, when I hears the trouble cry. First off I wasn't goin' to do any more than turn over and get a fresh hold on the mattress, for I ain't much on routin' out for fires unless I feel the head-board gettin' hot. But then I wakes up enough to remember that Rockywold is a long ways outside the metropolitan fire district, and I begins to throw clothes onto myself.

Inside of two minutes I was outdoors lookin' for a chance to win a Carnegie medal. There wasn't any show at all, though. The fire, what there was of it, was in the kitchen, in the basement of the wing where the help stays. Half a dozen stablemen had put it out with the garden hose, and were finishin' the job by soakin' one of the cooks, when I showed up.

I watched 'em for a while, and then started back to my room. Somehow I got twisted up in the shrubbery, and instead of goin' back the way I came, I gets around on the other corner. Just about then a ground-floor window is shoved up, and a female in white floats out on a little stone balcony. She waves her arms and begins to call for help.

"You're late," says I. "It's all over."

That didn't satisfy her at all, though. Some smoke and steam was still comin' from the far side of the buildin', and it was blowin' in through another window.

"Help, help!" she squeals. "Help, before I jump!"

"I wouldn't," says I, "they've gone home with the life net."

"The smoke, the smoke!" says she. "Oh, I must jump!"

"Well, if you've got the jumpin' fit," says I, "jump ahead; but if you can hold yourself in a minute, I'll bring a step-ladder."

"Then hurry, please hurry!" says she, and starts to climb up on the edge of the balcony.

It wa'n't more'n six feet to the turf anyway, and it wouldn't have been any killing matter if she had jumped, less'n she'd landed on her neck; but she was as looney as if she'd been standin' on top of the Flatiron Buildin'. Bein' as how I'd forgot to bring a step-ladder with me, I chases around after something she could come down on. The moon wasn't shinin' very bright though, and there didn't seem to be any boxes or barrels lyin' around loose, so I wasn't makin' much headway. But after awhile I gets hold of something that was the very ticket. It was one of these wooden stands for flower-pots. I lugs that over and sets it up under the window.

"Now if you'll just slide down onto that easy," says I, "your life is saved."

She looks at it once, and begins to flop her arms and take on again. "I never can do it, I know I can't!" says she. "I'll fall, I'll fall!"

Well, it was a case of Shorty McCabe to the rescue, after all. "Coming up!" says I, and hops on the thing, holdin' out me paws.

She didn't need any more coaxin'. She scrabbled over that balcony rail and got a shoulder clutch on me that you couldn't have loosened with a crowbar. I gathered in the rest of her with my left hand and steadied myself with the other. Lucky she wasn't a heavy-weight, or that pot-holder wouldn't have stood the strain. It creaked some as we went down, but it held together.

"Street floor, all out!" says I, as I hit the grass.

But that didn't even get a wiggle out of her.

"It's all over," says I. "You're rescued."

Talk about your cling-stones! She was it. Never a move. I couldn't tell whether she'd fainted, or was too scared to let go. But it was up to me to do something. I couldn't stand there for the rest of the night holdin' a strange lady draped the way she was, and it didn't seem to be just the right thing to sit down to it. Besides, one of her elbows was tryin' to puncture my right lung.

"If you're over the fire panic, I'll try and hoist you back through the window, miss," says I.

She wasn't ready to do any conversin' then, though. She was just holdin' onto me like I was too good a thing to let slip.

"Well, it looks to me as though we'd got to make a front entrance," says I; "but I hope the audience'll be slim," and with that I starts to finish the lap around the house and make for the double doors.



I've carried weight before, but never that kind, and it seemed like that blamed house was as big around as a city block. Once or twice we butted into the bushes, and another time I near tumbled the two of us into the pool of a fountain; but after awhile I struck the front porch, some out of breath, and with a few wisps of black hair in my eyes, but still in the game. The lady hadn't made a murmur, and she hadn't slacked her clinch.

I was hopin' to slide in quiet, without bein' spotted by anyone, for most of the women had gone back to bed, and I could hear the men down in the billiard room clickin' glasses over an extra dream-soother. Luck was against me, though. Right under the newel-post light stood Pinckney, wearin' a silk pajama coat outside of a pair of black broadcloth trousers. When he sees me and what I was luggin' he looks kind of pleased.

"Hello, Shorty!" says he. "What have you there?"

"It might be a porous-plaster, by the way it sticks," says I, "but it ain't. It's a lady I've been rescuin' while the rest of you guys was standin' around watchin' a wet cook."

"By Jove!" says Pinckney, steppin' up and takin' a close look. "Miriam!"

"Thanks," says I. "We ain't been introduced yet. Do you mind unhookin' her fingers from the back of my neck?"

But all he did was to stand there with his mouth corners workin', and them black eyes of his winkin' like a pair of arc lights.

"It's too pretty a picture to spoil," says he. "So touching! Reminds me of Andromeda and What's-his-name. Just keep that pose a minute, will you, until I bring up the rest of the fellows?"

"You'll bring up nothin'," says I, reachin' out with one hand and gettin' a grip on the collar of his silk jacket. "Now get busy, or off comes your kimono."

With that he quits kiddin' and goes to work on Miriam's fingers, and in about a minute she gives a little jump, like she'd just heard the breakfast bell.

"Why!" says she. "Where am I?"

"Right where you landed five minutes ago," says I.

Then she shudders all over and squeals: "Oh! A man! A man!"

"Sure," says I, "you didn't take me for a Morris chair, did you?"

Miriam didn't linger for any more. She lets loose a holler that near splits me ear open, slides down so fast that her bare tootsies hit the floor with a spat, grabs her what-d'ye-call-it up away from her ankles with both hands, and sprints down the hall as if she was makin' for the last car.

"Say," says I, gettin' me neck out of crook, "I wish that thought had come to her sooner. I feel as if I'd been squeezed by a pair of ice-tongs. If she can hug like that in her sleep, what could she do when she was wide awake?"

"Shorty," says Pinckney, with his face as solemn as a preacher's, "I'm pained and astonished at this."

"Me, too," says I.

"Don't jest," says he. "This looks to me like an attempt at kidnapping."

"If you'd had that grip on you, I guess you'd have thought it was the real thing," says I. "But here's a little tip I want to pass on to you: Don't go spreadin' this josh business around the lot, or your show'll be minus a star act. I'll stand for all the private kiddin' you can hand out, but I've got my objections to playin' a public joke-book part. Now, will you quit?"

He was mighty disappointed at havin' to do it, but he gave his word, and I makes tracks up stairs, glad enough to be let off so easy.

"It was a queer kind of a faint, if that's what it was," says I to myself. "I'll bet I fights shy of anything more of the kind that I sees comin' my way. This is what I gets for strayin' so far from Broadway."

But a little thing like that don't interfere with my sleepin', when slumber's on the card, and I proceeds to tear off what was due me on the eight-hour sched., and maybe a little more.

I didn't get a sight of Miriam all day long. Not that I was strainin' my eyes any. There was somethin' better to look at—Sadie, for instance. 'Course Pinckney was bossin' the show, but she was bossin' him, and anyone else that was handy. They were goin' to pull off the racket in the ball-room, and Sadie found a lot to do to it. She's a hummer, Sadie is. Maybe she wa'n't brought up among bow-legged English butlers and a lot of Swedish maids, but she's learned the trick of gettin' 'em to break their necks for her whenever she says the word.

All the forenoon more folks kept comin' on every train, and there was two rows of them big, deep-breathin' tourin' cars in the stables. By dinnertime Rockywold looked like a Saratoga hotel durin' the racin' season. Chappies were playin' lawn tennis, and luggin' golf bags around, and keepin' the ivories rollin', while the front walks and porches might have been Fifth-ave. on a Monday afternoon, from the dry-goods that was bein' sported there.

I stowed myself away in a corner of the billiard-room and didn't mix much, but I was takin' it all in. Not that I was feelin' lonesome, or anything like that. I likes to see any sort of fun, even if it ain't just my kind. And besides, there was more or less in the bunch that I knew first-rate. But I don't care about pushin' to the front until I gets the call.

So everything runs along smooth, and I was figurin' on makin' a late train down to Primrose Park after I'd done my little turn. I didn't care much about seein' the show, so I stuck to the dressin'-room until they sends word that it was my next. We'd had the punchin'-bag apparatus rigged up in the forenoon, and there wasn't anything left to be done but hook on the leather and spread out the mat.

Pinckney was doin' the announcin' and the jolly he gives me before he lugs me out was somethin' fierce. I reckon I was blushin' some when I went on. I took just one squint at the mob and felt a chill down my spine. Say, it's one thing to step up before a gang of sports in a hall, and another to prance out in ring clothes on a platform in front of two or three hundred real ladies and gents wearin' their evenin' togs.

There I was, though, and the crowd doin' the hurrah act for all it was worth. When I gets the bag goin' I feels better, and whatever grouch I has against Pinckney for not lettin' me wear my gym. suit I puts into short-arm punches on the pigskin. The stunt seemed to take. I could tell that by the buzz that came over the footlights. No matter what you're doin', whether it's makin' campaign speeches, or stoppin' a comer in six rounds, it's always a help to know that you've got the crowd with you.

By the time I'd got well warmed up, and was throwin' in all the flourishes that's been invented—double ducks, side-step and swing, shoulder work, and so on—I felt real chipper. I makes a grandstand finish, and then has the nerve to face the audience and do a matinee bend. As I did that I gets my lamps fixed on some one in the front row.

Say, if you've ever done much on the platform, you know how sometimes you'll get a squint at a pair of eyes down front and can't get yourself away from 'em after that. Well, that was the way with me then. There was rows and rows of faces that all looked alike, but this one phiz seemed to stand right out; and to save me, all I could do was to stare back.

It belonged to Miriam. She had her chin tucked down, and her head canted to one side, and her mouth puckered into the mushiest kind of a grin you ever saw. Her eyes were rolled up real kittenish, too. Oh, it was a combination to make a man strike his grandmother, that look she was sendin' up to me. I wanted to dodge it and pick up another, but there was no more gettin' away from it than as if I was bein' followed by a search-light. Worst of it was, I could feel myself grinnin' back at her just as mushy. I was gettin' sillier every breath, and I might have got as far as blowin' kisses at her if I hadn't pulled myself together and begun to juggle the Indian clubs, for the second half of my act.

All the ginger had faded out of me, though, and I cut the rest of it mighty short. As I comes off, Sadie grabs me and begins to tell me what a hit I'd made, and how tickled she was, but I shakes her off.

"What's your great rush, Shorty?" says she.

"I've got a date to fill down the road," says I, and I makes a quick break for the dressin'-room. Honest, I was gettin' rattled for fear if Miriam should get another look at me she'd mesmerize me so I'd never wake up. I skins into my sack-suit, leaves word to have my bag expressed to town, and was just about to make a sudden exit when I bumps into some one at the front door.

"Oh, Mr. McCabe! How did you know where to find me?" says she.

Say, I'll give you one guess. Sure, it was Miriam again. She was got up expensive, all real lace and first-water sparks, and just as handsome as a towel rack. But the minute she turns on that gushy look I'm nailed to the spot, same as the rabbits they feed to the boa-constrictors up at the Zoo.

"You didn't think you could lose me so easy, did you?" says I.

"What a persistent fellow you are!" says she. "But, after you behaved so heroically last night, I suppose I must forgive you. Wasn't it silly of me to be so frightened?"

"Oh, well," says I, "the best of us is apt to go off our nut sometimes."

"How sweet of you to put it that way!" says she, and then she uncorks a giggle. "You did carry me so nicely, too."

That was a sample. I wouldn't go on and give you the whole book of the opera for money. It's somethin' I'm tryin' to forget. But we swapped that kind of slush for near half an hour, and when the show broke up and the crowd began to swarm towards the buffet lunch, we was sittin' out on the porch in the moonlight, still at it. Pinckney says we was holdin' hands and gazin' at each other like a couple of spoons in the park. Maybe we was; I wouldn't swear different.

All I know is that after a while I looks up and sees Sadie standin' there pipin' us off, with her nose in the air and the heat lightnin' kind of glimmerin' in them blue eyes of hers. The spell was broke quicker'n when the curtain goes down and the ushers open the lobby doors. 'Course, Sadie's nothin' more'n an old friend of mine, and I'm no more to her, but you see it hadn't been so long ago that I'd been tellin' her what a sweat I was in to get away. She never said a word, only just sticks her chin up and laughs, and then goes on.

Next minute there shows up in front of us a fat old lady, with three chins and a waist like a clothes hamper.

"Miriam!" says she, and there was wire nails and broken glass in the way she said it, "Miriam, I think it was high time you retired."

"Bully for you, old girl!" I sings out. "And say, I'll give you a dollar if you'll lock her in until I can get away."

Perhaps that was a low-down thing to say, but I couldn't help lettin' it come. I didn't wait for any more remarks from either of 'em, but I grabs my hat and makes a dash across lots. I never stopped runnin' until I fetched the station, and it wasn't until after the train pulled out that I breathed real easy.

Bein' safe here in the Studio, with Swifty on guard, I might grin at the whole thing, if it wasn't for that laugh of Sadie's. That cut in deep. Two or three days later I hears from Pinckney.

"Shorty," says he, "you're a wonder. I fancy you don't know what you did in getting so chummy with Miriam under the very nose of that old watch-dog aunt of hers. Why, I know of fellows who've waited years for that chance."

"Back up!" says I. "She's a freak."

"But Miriam's worth three or four millions," says he.

"I don't care if she owns a bond factory," says I. "I'm no bone connoisseur, nor I don't make a specialty of collectin' autumn leaves. Do you know what I'd do if I was her aunt?"

"What?" says he.

"Well," says I, "I'd hang a red lantern on her."



CHAPTER XIV

You never can tell, though. The next thing I hears from Sadie is that she's so tickled over that Miriam mix-up that she wakes up in the night to snicker at it.

That makes me feel a lot easier in my mind, and just by way of bein' reckless, I starts out to buy a bull pup. I'd have got him, too, if it hadn't been for Doc Pinphoodle. Seein' the way things turned out, though, I don't bear no grudge.

It was the Doc I met first. I'd noticed him driftin' up and down the stairs once or twice, but didn't pipe him off special. There's too many freaks around 42nd-st. 'to keep cases on all of 'em.

But one day about a month ago I was sittin' in the front office here, gettin' the ear-ache from hearing Swifty Joe tell about what he meant to do to Gans that last time, when the door swings open so hard it most takes the hinges off, and we sees a streak of arms and legs and tall hat makin' a dive under the bed couch in the corner.

"They've most got the range, Swifty," says I. "Two feet to the left and you'd been a bull's-eye. What you got your mouth open so wide for? Goin' to try to catch the next one in your teeth?"

Swifty didn't have time to uncork any repartee before someone struck the landing outside like they'd come down a flight of foldin' steps feet first, and a little, sharp-nosed woman, with purple flowers in her hat, bobs in and squints once at each of us. Say, I don't want to be looked at often like that! It felt like bein' sampled with a cheese tester.

"Did Montgomery Smith just come in here?" says she. "Did he? Don't lie, now! Where is he?" and the way she jerked them little black eyes around was enough to tear holes in the matting.

"Lady—" says I.

"Don't lady me, Mr. Fresh," says she, throwin' the gimlets my way. "And tell that broken-nosed child stealer over there to take that monkey grin off'm his face or I'll scratch his eyes out."

"Hully chee!" yells Swifty, throwin' a back somersault through the gym. door and snappin' the lock on his side.

"Anything more, miss?" says I. "We're here to please."

"Humph!" says she. "It'd take somethin' better than you to please me."

"Glad I was born lucky," thinks I, but I thought it under my breath.

"Is my Monty hiding in that room?" says she, jabbin' a finger at the gym.

"Cross my heart, he ain't," says I.

"I don't believe you could think quick enough to lie," says she, and with that she flips out about as fast as she came in.

I didn't stir until I hears her hit the lower hall. Then I bolts the door, goes and calls Swifty down off the top of the swingin' rope, and we comes to a parade rest alongside the couch.

"Monty, dear Monty," says I, "the cyclone's passed out to sea. Come out and give up your rain check."

He backs out feet first, climbs up on the couch, and drops his chin into his hands for a minute, while he gets over the worst of the shock. Say, at first sight he wa'n't a man you'd think any woman would lose her breath tryin' to catch, less'n she was his landlady, and that was what I figures out that this female peace disturber was.

Monty might have been a winner once, but it was a long spell back. Just then he was some out of repair. He had a head big enough for a college professor, and a crop of hair like an herb doctor, but his eyes were puffy underneath, and you could see by the cafe au lait tint to his face that his liver'd been on a long strike. He was fairly thick through the middle, but his legs didn't match the rest of him. They were too thin and too short.

"If I'd known you was comin', I'd had the scrub lady dust under there," says I; "but it won't need it now for a couple of weeks."

He makes a stab at sayin' something, but his breath hadn't come back yet. He revives enough though, to take a look at his clothes. Then he works his silk dicer up off'm his ears, and has a peek at that. It was a punky lid, all right, but it had saved a lot of wear on his koko when he made that slide for home plate and struck the wall.

"Was this a long-distance run, or just a hundred-yard sprint?" says I. "Never mind, if it comes hard. I don't blame you a bit for side-steppin' a heart to heart talk with any such a rough-and-ready converser as your friend. I'd do the same myself."

He looks up kind of grateful at that, and sticks out a soft, lady-like paw for me to shake. Say, that wasn't such a slow play, either! He was too groggy to say a word, but he comes pretty near winnin' me right there. I sets Swifty to work on him with the whisk-broom, hands out a glass of ice-water, and in a minute or so his voice comes back.

Oh, yes, he had one. It was a little shaky, but, barrin' that, it was as smooth as mayonnaise. And language! Why, just tellin' me how much obliged he was, he near stood the dictionary on its head. There wa'n't no doubt of his warm feelin' for me by the time he was through. It was almost like bein' adopted by a rich uncle.

"Oh, that's all right," says I. "You can use that couch any time the disappearin' fit comes on. She was hot on the trail; eh, Monty?"

"It was all a painful, absurd error," says he, "a mistaken identity, I presume. Permit me to make myself known to you," and he shoves out his card.

Rasmulli Pinphoodle, J. R. D.—that was the way it read.

"Long ways from Smith, ain't it?" says I. "The first of it sounds like a Persian rug."

"My Hindu birth name," says he.

"I'd have bet you wa'n't a domestic filler," says I. "The Pinphoodle is English, ain't it?"

He smiles like I'd asked him to split a pint with me, and says that it was.

"But the tag on the end—J. R. D.—I passes up," says I. "Don't stand for Judge of Rent Dodgers, does it?"

"Those letters," says he, makin' another merry face, "represent the symbols of my Vedic progression."

"If I'd stopped to think once more, I'd fetched that," says I.

It was a jolly. I've never had the Vedic progression—anyways, not had enough to know it at the time—but I wasn't goin' to let him stun me that way.

Later on I got next to the fact that he was some kind of a healer, and that the proper thing to do was to call him Doc. Seems he had a four-by-nine office on the top floor back, over the Studio, and that he was just startin' to introduce the Vedic stunt to New York. Mostly he worked the mailorder racket. He showed me his ad in the Sunday personal column, and it was all to the velvet. Accordin' to his own specifications he was a head-liner in the East Indian philosophy business, whatever that was. He'd just torn himself away from the crowned heads of Europe for an American tour, and he stood ready to ladle out advice to statesmen, tinker up broken hearts, forecast the future, and map out the road to Wellville for millionaires who'd gone off their feed.

He sure had a full bag of tricks to draw from; but I've noticed that the more glass balls you try to keep in the air at once, the surer you are to queer the act. And Pinphoodle didn't look like a gent that kept the receivin' teller workin' overtime.

There was something about him, though, that was kind of dignified. He was the style of chap that would blow his last dime on havin' his collar 'n' cuffs polished, and would go without eatin' rather than frisk the free lunch at a beer joint. He was willin' to talk about anything but the female with the gimlet eyes and the keen-cutter tongue.

"She is a mistaken, misguided person," says he. "And by the way, Professor McCabe, there is a fire-escape, I believe, which leads from my office down to your back windows. Would it be presuming too much if I should ask you to admit me there occasionally, in the event of my being—er—pursued again?"

"It ain't a board bill, is it, Doc?" says I.

"Nothing of the kind, I assure you," says he.

"Glad to hear it," says I. "As a rule, I don't run no rock-of-ages refuge, but I likes to be neighborly, so help yourself."

We fixed it up that way, and about every so often I'd see Doc Pinphoodle slidin' in the back window, with a worried look on his face, and iron rust on his trousers. He was a quiet neighbor, though—didn't torture the cornet, or deal in voice culture, or get me to cash checks that came back with remarks in red ink written on 'em.

I was wonderin' how the Vedic stunt was catchin' on, when all of a sudden he buds out in an eight-dollar hat, this year's model, and begins to lug around an iv'ry-handled cane.

"I'm glad they're comin' your way, Doc," says I.

"Thanks," says he. "If I can in any measure repay some of the many kindnesses which you have—"

"Sponge it off," says I. "Maybe I'll want to throw a lady off the scent myself, some day."

A week or so later I misses him altogether, and the janitor tells me he's paid up and moved. Well, they come and go like that, so it don't do to feel lonesome; but I had the floor swept under the couch reg'lar, on a chance that he might show up again.

It was along about then that I hears about the bull pup. I'd been wantin' to have one out to Primrose Park—where I goes to prop up the weekend, you know. Pinckney was tellin' me of a friend of his that owns a likely-lookin' litter about two months old, so one Saturday afternoon I starts to hoof it over and size 'em up.

Now that was reg'lar, wa'n't it? You wouldn't think a two-eyed man like me could go astray just tryin' to pick out a bull pup, would you? But look what I runs into! I'd gone about four miles from home, and was hittin' up a Daddy Weston clip on the side path, when I sees one of them big bay-windowed bubbles slidin' past like a train of cars. There was a girl on the back seat that looks kind of natural. She sees me, too, shouts to Francois to put on the emergency brake, and begins wavin' her parasol at me to hurry on. It was Sadie Sullivan.

"Hurry up, Shorty! Run!" she yells. "There isn't a minute to lose."

I gets up on my toes at that, and I hadn't no more'n climbed aboard before the machine was tearin' up the macadam again.

"Anybody dyin'," says I, "or does the bargain counter close at five o'clock?"

"Aunt Tillie's eloping," says she, "and if we don't head her off she'll marry an old villain who ought to be in jail."

"Not Mr. Pinckney's Aunt Tillie, the old girl that owns the big place up near Blenmont?" says I.

"That's the one," says Sadie.

"Why she's qualified for an old ladies' home," says I. "You don't mean to say she's got kittenish at her age."

"There's no age limit to that kind of foolishness," says Sadie, "and this looks like a serious attack. We've got to stop it, though, for I promised Pinckney I'd stand guard until he came back from Newport."

I hadn't seen the old girl myself, but I knew her record, and now I got it revised to date. She'd hooked two husbands in her time, but neither of 'em had lasted long. Then she gave it up for a spell and it wa'n't until she was sixty-five that she begins to wear rainbow clothes again, and caper around like one of the squab octet. Lately she'd begun to show signs of wantin' to sit in a shady corner with a man.

Pinckney had discouraged a bald-headed minister, warned off an old bachelor, and dropped strong hints to a couple of widowers that took to callin' frequent for afternoon tea. Then a new one had showed up.

"He's a sticker, too," says Sadie. "I don't know where Aunt Tillie found him, but Pinckney says he's been coming out from the city every other day for a couple of weeks. She's been meeting him at the station and taking him for drives. She says he's some sort of an East Indian priest, and that he's giving her lessons in a new faith cure that she's taking up. To-day, though, after she'd gone off, the housekeeper found that her trunk had been smuggled to the station. Then a note was picked up in her room. It said something about meeting her at the church of St. Paul's-in-the-Wood, at four-thirty, and was signed, 'Your darling Mulli.' Oh, dear, it's almost half-past now! Can't you go any faster, Francois?"

I thought he couldn't, but he did. He jammed the speed lever up another notch, and in a minute more we were hittin' only the high places. We caromed against them red-leather cushions like a couple of pebbles in a bottle, and it was a case of holdin' on and hoping the thing would stay right side up. I hadn't worked up much enthusiasm about gettin' to St. Paul's-in-the-Wood before, but I did then, all right. Never was so glad to see a church loom up as I was that one.

"That's her carriage at the chapel door," says Sadie. "Shorty, we must stop this thing."

"It's out of my line," says I, "but I'll help all I can."

We made a break for the front door and butted right in, just as though they'd sent us cards. It wasn't very light inside, but down at the far end we could see a little bunch of folks standin' around as if they was waitin' for somethin' to happen.

Sadie didn't make any false motions. She sailed down the center aisle and took Aunt Tillie by the arm. She was a dumpy, pie-faced old girl, with plenty of ballast to keep her shoes down, and a lot of genuine store hair that was puffed and waved like the specimens you see in the Sixth-ave. show cases. She was actin' kind of nervous, and grinnin' a silly kind of grin, but when she spots Sadie she quit that and puts on a look like the hired girl wears when she's been caught bein' kissed by the grocery boy.

"You haven't done it, have you?" says Sadie.

"No," says Aunt Tillie; "but it's going to be done just as soon as the rector gets on his other coat."

"Now please don't, Mrs. Winfield," says Sadie, gettin' a waist grip on the old girl, and rubbin' her cheek up against her shoulder in that purry, coaxin' way she has. "You know how badly we should all feel if it didn't turn out well, and Pinckney—"

"He's a meddlesome, impertinent young scamp!" says Aunt Tillie, growin' red under the layers of rice powder. "Haven't I a right to marry without consulting him, I'd like to know?"

"Oh, yes, of course," says Sadie, soothing her down, "but Pinckney says—"

"Don't tell me anything that he says, not a word!" she shouts. "I won't listen to it. He had the impudence to suggest that my dear Mulli was a—a corn doctor, or something like that."

"Did he?" says Sadie. "I wouldn't have thought it of Pinckney. Well, just to show him that he was wrong, I would put this affair off until you can have a regular church wedding; with invitations, and ushers, and pretty flower girls. And you ought to have a gray-silk wedding-gown—you'd look perfectly stunning in gray silk, you know. Wouldn't all that be much nicer than running off like this, as though you were ashamed of something?"

Say, it was a slick game of talk that Sadie handed out then, for she was playin' for time. But Aunt Tillie was no come-on.

"Mulli doesn't want to wait another day," says she, "and neither do I, so that settles it. And here comes the rector, now."

"Looks like we'd played out our hand, don't it?" I whispered to Sadie.

"Wait!" says she. "I want to get a good look at the man."

He was trailin' along after the minister, and it wa'n't until he was within six feet of me that I saw who it was.

"Hello, Doc!" says I. "So you're the dear Mulli, are you?"

He near jumped through his collar, Pinphoodle did, when he gets his lamps on me. It only lasted a minute, though, for he was a quick recoverer.

"Why, professor!" says he. "This is an unexpected pleasure."

"I guess some of that's right," says I.

And say, but he was dressed for the joyful bridegroom part—striped trousers, frock coat, white puff tie, and white gloves! He'd had a close shave and a shampoo, and the massage artist had rubbed out some of the swellin' from under his eyes. Didn't look much like the has-been that done the dive under the couch at the Studio.

"Well, well!" says I. "This is where the private cinch comes in, eh? Doc, you've got a head like a horse."

"I should think he'd be ashamed of himself," says Sadie, "running off with a silly old woman who might be his mother."

The Sullivan temper had got the best of her. After that the deep lard was all over the cook stove. Aunt Tillie throws four cat-fits to the minute, and lets loose on Sadie with all kinds of polite jabs that she can lay her tongue to. Then Doc steps up, puts a manly arm half-way round her belt line, and lets her weep on the silk facing of his Sunday coat.

By this time the preacher was all broke up. He was a nice healthy-lookin' young chap, one of the strawb'ry-blond kind, with pink and white cheeks, and hair as soft as a toy spaniel's. It turns out that he was new to the job, and this was his first call to spiel off the splicin' service.

"I trust," says he, "that there is nothing—er—that no one has any valid objection to the uniting of this couple?"

"I will convince you of that," says Doc Pinphoodle, speakin' up brisk and cocky, "by putting to this young lady a few pertinent questions."

Well, he did. As a cross-examiner for the defense he was a regular Joe Choate. Inside of two minutes he'd made torn mosquito netting of Sadie's kick, shown her up for a rank outsider, and put us both through the ropes.

"Now," says he, with a kind of calm, satisfied I've-swallowed-the-canary smile, "we will proceed with the ceremony."

Sadie was near cryin with the mad in her, she bein' a hard loser at any game. "You're an old fraud, that's what you are!" she spits out. "And you're just marrying Pinckney's silly old aunt to get her money."

But that rolls off Doc like a damage suit off'm a corporation. He just smiles back at her, and goes to chirkin' up Aunt Tillie. Doc was it, and knew where he stood. He had us down and out. In five minutes more he'd have a two-hundred-pound wife and a fifty-thousand-dollar income.

"It strikes me," says he, over his shoulder, "that if I had got hold of a fortune in the way you got yours, young woman, I wouldn't make any comments about mercenary marriages."

Well, say, up to that time I had a half-baked idea that maybe I wasn't called on to block his little game, but when he begins to rub it into Sadie I sours on Doc right away. And it always does take one or two good punches to warm me up to a scrap. I begins to do some swift thinkin'.

"Hold on there, Doc," says I. "I'll give in that you've got our case quashed as it stood. But maybe there's someone else that's got an interest in these doin's."

"Ah!" says he. "And who might that be?"

"Mrs. Montgomery Smith," says I.

It was a chance shot, but it rung the bell. Doc goes as limp as a straw hat that's been hooked up after a dip in the bay, and his eyes took on that shifty look they had the first time I ever saw him.

"Why," says he, swallowin' hard, and doing his best to get back the stiff front he'd been puttin' up—"why, there's no such person."

"No?" says I. "How about the one that calls you Monty and runs you under the couch?"

"It's a lie!" says he. "She's nothing to me, nothing at all."

"Oh, well," says I, "that's between you and her. She says different. Anyway, she's come clear up here to put in her bid; so it's no more'n fair to give her a show. I'll just bring her in."

As I starts towards the front door Doc gives me one look, to see if I mean business. Then, Sadie says, he turns the color of pie-crust, drops Aunt Tillie as if she was a live wire, and jumps through the back door like he'd been kicked by a mule. I got back just in time to see him hurdle a five-foot hedge without stirrin' a leaf, and the last glimpse we got of him he was headin' for a stretch of woods up Connecticut way.

"Looks like you'd just missed assistin' at a case of bigamy," says I to the young preacher, as we was bringin' Aunt Tillie out of her faint.

"Shocking!" says he. "Shocking!" as he fans himself with a hymn book. He was takin' it hard.

Aunt Tillie wouldn't speak to any of us, and as we bundled her into her carriage and sent her home she looked as mad as a settin' hen with her feet tied.

"Shorty," says Sadie, on the way back, "that was an elegant bluff you put up."

"Lucky my hand wa'n't called," says I. "But it was rough on the preacher chap, wa'n't it? He had his mouth all made up to marry some one. Blamed if I didn't want to offer him a job myself."

"And who would you have picked out, Shorty?" says she.

"Well," says I, lookin' her over wishful, "there ain't never been but one girl that I'd choose for a side partner, and she's out of my class now."

"Was her name Sullivan once?" says she.

"It was," says I.

She didn't say anything more for a spell after that, and I didn't; but there's times when conversation don't fit in. All I know is that you can sit just as close on the back seat of one of them big benzine carts as you can on a parlor sofa; and with Sadie snuggled up against me I felt like it was always goin' to be summer, with Sousa's band playin' somewhere behind the rubber trees.

First thing I knows we fetches up at my shack in Primrose Park, and I was standin' on the horse block, alongside the bubble. Sadie'd dropped both hands on my shoulders and was turnin' them eyes of hers on me at close range. Francois was lookin' straight ahead, and there wasn't anyone in sight. So I just took a good look into that pair of Irish blues.

"What a chump you are, Shorty!" she whispers.

"Ah, quit your kiddin'," says I. But I didn't make any move, and she didn't.

"Well, good-by," says she, lettin' out a long breath.

"By-by, Sadie," says I, and off she goes.

Say, I don't know how it was, but I've been feelin' ever since that I'd missed somethin' that was comin' to me. Maybe it was that bull pup I forgot to buy.



CHAPTER XV

Flag it, now, and I'll say it for you. Yes, you read about it in the papers, and says you: "Is it all so?" Well, some of it was, and some of it wasn't. But what do you expect? No two of the crowd would tell it the same way, if they was put on the stand the next minute. Here's the way it looked from where I stood, though; and I was some close, wa'n't I?

You see, after I woke up from that last trance, I gets to thinkin' about Sadie, and Miriam, and all them false alarms I've been ringin' in; and, says I to myself: "Shorty, if I couldn't make a better showin' than that, I'd quit the game." So I quits. I chases myself back to town for good, says hello to all the boys, and tells Swifty Joe, if he sees me makin' another move towards the country, to heave a sand bag at me.

Not that there was any loud call for me to tend out so strict on the physical culture game. I'd been kind of easin' up on that lately, and dippin' into outside things; and it was them I needed to keep closer track of. You know I've got a couple of flat houses up on the West side, and if you let them agents run things their own way you'll be makin' almost enough to buy new hall carpets once a year.

Then there was ripe chances I was afraid of missin'. You see, knockin' around so much with the fat wads, I often sees spots where a few dollars could be planted right. Sometimes it's a hunch on the market, and then again it's a straight steer on a slice of foot front that's goin' cheap. I do a lot of dickerin' that way.

Well, I'd just pushed through a deal that leaves me considerable on velvet, and I was feelin' kind of flush and sassy, when Mr. Ogden calls me up, and wants to know if I can make use of a gilt edged bargain.

"Oh, I don't know," says I. "What's it look like?"

"It's The Toreador," says he.

"Sounds good," says I. "How much?"

"Cost me forty thousand two years ago," says he, "but I'm turning it over for twenty-five to the first bidder."

Well, say, when old man Ogden slings cold figures at you like that, you can gamble that he's talkin' straight.

"I'm it, then," says I. "Fifteen down, ten on mortgage."

"That suits me," says he. "I'll have the papers made out to-day."

"And say," says I, "what is this Toreador, anyway; a race horse, or an elevator apartment?"

Would you guess it? He'd hung up the receiver. That's what I got for bein' sporty. But I wa'n't goin' to renig at that stage. I fills out me little blue check and sends her in, and that night I goes to bed without knowin' what it is that I've passed up my coin for.

It must have been near noon the next day, for I'd written a letter and got my check book stubs added up so they come within two or three hundred of what the bank folks made it, when a footman in white panties and a plum colored coat drifts through the Studio door.

"Is this Professor McCabe, sir?" says he.

"Yep," says I.

"There's a lady below, sir," says he. "Can she come up?"

"It ain't reg'lar," says I, "but I s'pose there's no dodgin' her. Tell her to come ahead."

Say, I wa'n't just fixed up for receivin' carriage comp'ny. When I writes and figures I gets more mussed up than as if I'd been in a free-for-all. I'd shed my coat on one chair, my vest on another, slipped off my suspenders, rumpled my hair, and got ink on me in seventeen places. But I didn't have sense enough to say I was out.

In a minute or so there was a click-click on the stairs, I gets a whiff of l'Issoir Danube, and in comes a veiled lady. She was a brandied peach; from the outside lines, anyway. Them clothes of hers couldn't have left Paris more'n a month before, and they clung to her like a wet undershirt to a fat man. And if you had any doubts as to whether or no she had the goods, all you had to do was to squint at the big amethyst in the handle of the gold lorgnette she wore around her neck. For a Felix-Tiffany combination, she was it. You've seen women of that kind—reg'lar walkin' expense accounts.

"So you are Shorty McCabe, are you?" says she, givin' me a customs inspector look-over, and kind of sniffin'.

"Sorry I don't suit," says I.

"How odd!" says she. "I must make a note of that."

"Help yourself," says I. "Is there anything else?"

"Is it true," says she, "that you have bought The Toreador?"

"Who's been givin' you that?" says I, prickin' up my ears.

"Mr. Ogden," says she.

"He's an authority," says I, "and what he says along that line I don't dispute."

"Then you have bought it?" says she. "How exasperating! I was going to get Mr. Ogden to let me have The Toreador this week."

"The whole of it?" says I.

"Why, of course," says she.

"Gee!" thinks I. "It can't be an apartment house, then. Maybe it's an oil paintin', or a parlor car."

"But there!" she goes on. "I suppose you only bought it as a speculation. Now what is your price for next week?"

Say, for the love of Pete, I couldn't tell what it was gave me a grouch. Maybe it was only the off-hand way she threw it out, or the snippy chin-toss that goes with it. But I felt like I'd been stroked with a piece of sand paper.

"It's too bad," says I, "but you've made a wrong guess. I'm usin' The Toreador next week myself."

"You!" says she, and through the gauze curtain I could see her hump her eyebrows.

That finished the job. Even if The Toreador turned out to be a new opera house or a tourin' balloon, I was goin' to keep it busy for the next seven days.

"Why not me?" I says.

"All alone?" says she.

Well, I didn't know where it would land me, but I wa'n't goin' to have her tag me for a solitaire spender.

"Not much," says I. "I was just makin' up my list. How do you spell Mrs. Twombley-Crane's last name—with a k?"

"Really!" says she. "Do you mean to say that she is to be one of your guests? Then you must be going just where I'd planned to go—to the Newport evolutions?"

"Sure thing," says I. I'd heard of their havin' all kinds of fool doin's at Newport, but evolutions wa'n't one of 'em. The bluff had to be made good, though.

The lady pushes up her mosquito nettin' drop, like she wanted to see if I was unwindin' the string ball or not, and then for a minute she taps her chin with them foldin' eyeglasses. I wanted to sing out to her that she'd dent the enamel if she didn't quit bein' so careless, but I held in. Say, what's the use eatin' carrots and takin' buttermilk baths, when you can have a mercerized complexion like that laid on at the shop?

All of a sudden she flashes up a little silver case, and pushes out a visitin' card.

"There's my name and address," says she. "If you should change your mind about using The Toreador, you may telephone me; and I hope you will."

"Oh!" says I, spellin' out the old English letters. "I've heard Pinckney speak of you. Well, say, seein' as you're so anxious, I'll tell you what I'll do; I'll just put you down for an in-vite. How does that hit you?"

I had an idea she might blow up, at that. But say, there was nothin' of the kind.

"Why," says she, "I'm not sure but that would be quite a novelty. Yes, you may count on me. Good day," and she was gone without so much as a "thank you kindly."

When I came to, and had sized the thing all up, it looked like I'd got in over my head. I was due to stand for some kind of a racket, but whether it was a picnic, or a surprise party, I didn't know. What I wanted just then was information, and for certain kinds of knowledge there's nobody like Pinckney.

I was dead lucky to locate him, too; but I took a chance on his bein' in town, so I found him at his special corner table in the palm room, just lookin' a dry Martini in the face.

"Hello, Shorty!" says he. "Haven't lunched yet, have you? Join me."

"I will," says I, "if you'll answer me two questions. First off, what is it that Mr. Ogden owns that he calls The Toreador?"

"Why," says Pinckney, "that's his steam yacht."

"Steam yacht!" says I, gettin' a good grip on the chair, to keep from falling out. "And me dead sure it was a bunch of six-room-and-baths! Oh, well, let that pass. What's done is done. Now what's this evolution stunt they're pullin' off up at Newport next week?"

"The naval evolutions, of course," says Pinckney. "You should read the newspapers, Shorty."

"I do," says I, "but I didn't see a word about it on the sportin' page."

He gave me the program, though; how they was goin' to have a sham torpedo battle, windin' up with a grand illumination of the fleet.

"You ought to run up and see it," says he.

"It looks like I had to," says I.

"But what about The Toreador?" says he.

"Nothin' much," says I,—"only I've bought the blamed thing."

It was Pinckney's turn to grow bug-eyed; but when I'd told him all about the deal, and how the veiled lady had stung me into sayin' what I had, he's as pleased as if he'd been readin' the joke column.

"Shorty," says he, "you're a genius. Why, that's the very thing to do. Get together your party, steam up there, anchor in the harbor, and see the show. It's deuced good form, you know."

"That's all I want," says I. "Just so long's I'm sure I'm in good form, I'm happy. But say, I wouldn't dare tackle it unless you went along."

I found out later that Pinckney'd turned down no less than three parties of that kind, but when I puts it up to him, he never fiddles short at all.

"Why, I'd be delighted," says he.

With that we finishes our cold fried egg salad, or whatever fancy dish it was we had on the platter, and then we pikes off to the pier where he says the yacht's tied up. And say, she was somethin' of a boat. She made that Dixie Girl, that Woodie and me brought the Incubator kids down in, look like a canoe. She was white all over, except for a gold streak around her, and a couple of dinky yellow masts.

I didn't go down stairs. We plants ourselves in some green cushioned easy chairs under the back stoop awnin', and I sends one of the white-wing hired hands after the conductor.

"It's the sailing master you want," says Pinckney.

"Well, bring him along, too," says I.

But there was only the one. He was a solid built, quiet spoken chap, with a full set of red whiskers and a state of Maine accent. He said his name was Bassett, and that he was just packin' his things to go ashore, havin' heard that the boat had been sold.

"The shore'll be there next month," says I. "What'll you take to stay on the job?"

Well, he didn't want no iron worker's wages, bein' content with a captain's salary, so I tells him to take hold right where he left off and tell the rest of the gang they could do the same. So inside of half an hour I has a couple of dozen men on the pay roll.

"Gee!" says I to Pinckney, "I'm glad the yachtin' season's most over when I begin; if it wa'n't I'm thinkin' I'd have to go out nights with a jimmy."

But Pinckney's busy with his silver pencil, writin' down names.

"There!" says he. "I've thought of a dozen nice people that I'm sure of, and perhaps I'll remember a few more in the mean time."

"Say," says I, "have you got the Twombley-Cranes and Sadie on that list?"

"Oh, certainly," says he, "especially Sadie." And then he grins.

Well, for about four days I'm the busiest man out of a job in New York. I carries a bunch of railroad stocks on margin, trades off some Bronx buildin' lots for a cold water tenement, and unloads a street openin' contract that I bought off'm a Tammany Hall man. Every time I thinks of that steam yacht, with all them hands burnin' up my money, I goes out and does some more hustlin'. Say, there's nothin' like needin' the dough, for keepin' a feller up on his toes, is there? And when the time came to knock off, and I'd reckoned up how much I was to the good, I feels like Johnny Gates after he's cashed his chips.

Yes, indeed, I was a gay boy as I goes aboard The Toreador and waits for the crowd to come along. I'd made myself a present of a white flannel suit and a Willie Collier yachtin' cap, and if there'd been an orchestra down front I could have done a yo-ho-ho baritone solo right off the reel.

Pinckney shows up in good season, and he'd fetched his people, all right. There was a string of tourin' cars and carriages half a block long. They was all friends of mine, too; from Sadie to the little old bishop. And they was nice, decent folks. Maybe they don't have their pictures printed in the Sunday editions as often as some, but they're ice cutters, just the same. They all said it was lovely of me to remember 'em.

"Ah, put it away!" says I. "You folks has been blowin' me, off'n on for a year, and this is my first set-up. I ain't wise to the way things ought to be done on one of these boudoir boats, but I wants everyone to be happy. Don't wait for the Who-wants-the-waiter call, but just act like you was all star boarders. Everything in sight is yours, from, the wicker chairs on deck, to what's in the ice box below. And I want to say right here that I'm mighty glad you've come. Now, Mr. Bassett, I guess you can tie her loose."

Honest, that was the first speech I ever shot off, in or out of the ring, but it seemed to go. They was all pattin' me on the back, and givin' me the grand jolly, when a cab comes down the pier on the jump, someone waves a red parasol, and out floats the veiled lady, with a maid. I'd sent her an invite, just as I said I would, but I never thought she'd have the front to take it up.