ff. "If there is an inch of this old town I can't put
my finger on in the dark, blindfolded, I'll have that inch dug out and
thrown away."

At the curb, with keen enjoyment of the joke of it all, Bobby gravely
introduced Mr. Biff Bates, ex-champion middle-weight, to these
imported artists, but, very much to his surprise, Signorina Caravaggio
and Professor Bates struck up an instant and animated conversation
anent Biff's well-known and justly-famous victory over Slammer Young,
and so interested did they become in this conversation that instead of
Biff's sitting up in the front seat, as Bobby had intended, the
eminent instructor of athletics manoeuvered the Herr Professor into
that post of honor and climbed into the tonneau with Signor Ricardo
and the Signorina, with the latter of whom he talked most volubly all
the way over, to the evidently vast annoyance of Der Grosse Tenore.

The confusion of tongues must have been a very tame and quiet affair
as compared to the polyglot chattering which burst upon Bobby's ears
when he entered the small lobby of the Hotel Larken. The male members
of the Neapolitan Grand Opera Company, almost to a man, were smoking
cigarettes. There were swarthy little men and swarthy big men, there
seeming to be no medium sizes among them, while the women were the
most wooden-featured lot that Bobby had ever encountered, and the
entire crowd was swathed in gay but dingy clothing of the most
nondescript nature. Really, had Bobby not been assured that they were
grand opera singers he would have taken them for a lot of immigrants,
for they had that same unhappy expression of worry. The principals
could be told from the chorus and the members of the orchestra from
the fact that they stood aloof from the rest and from one another,
gloomily nursing their grievances that they, each one the most
illustrious member of the company, should thus be put to
inconvenience! It was a monstrous thing that they, the possessors of
glorious voices which the entire world should at once fall down and
worship, should be actually hungry and out of money! It was, oh,
unbelievable, atrocious, barbarous, positively inhuman!

With the entrance of the Signorina Caravaggio, bearing triumphantly
with her the neatly-dressed and altogether money-like Bobby Burnit,
one hundred and forty wistful eyes, mostly black and dark brown, were
immediately focused in eager interest upon the possible savior. Behind
the desk, perplexed and distr