fam'ly party, chuckin' repartee across the
pink candle shades, and behavin' like star boarders that had paid in
advance.

It was Sadie, though, that had the centre of the stage, and I'll be
staggered if she didn't jump in to make her bluff good. She let out
everything that she shouldn't have told, from how she used to wait on
table at her mother's boarding-house, to the way she'd got the frozen
face ever since she came to town.

"But what am I expected to do?" says she. "I've got no Hetty Green grip
on my bankbook. There's a whole binful of the 'Drowsy Drop' dollars, and
I'm willing to throw 'em on the bonfire just as liberal as the next one,
only I want a place around the ring. There's no fun in playing a lone
hand, is there? I've been trying to find out what's wrong with me,
anyway?"

"My dear girl," says Mrs. Twombley-Crane, "there's nothing wrong with
you at all. You're simply delicious. Isn't she, now, Freddie?"

And Freddie just grinned. Say, some men is born wise. "Professor McCabe
and I are exchanging views on the coming light-weight contest," says he.
"Don't mind us, my dear."

Perhaps that's what we were gassin' about, or why is a hen. You can
search me. I was that rattled with Sadie's nerve display that I didn't
follow anything else real close.

But when it was all over, and I'd been brought to by a peep at the bill
the waiter handed me, I couldn't figure out whether she'd made a
bull's-eye or rung in a false alarm.

One thing I did notice, as we sails out, and that was the stout
Pettigrew person who'd passed Sadie the pickled pig's foot on the avenue
that afternoon. She was sitting opposite a skimpy little runt with a
bald head, at a table up near the door where the waiters juggled soup
over her feathers every time they passed. Her eyes were glued on Sadie
as we came up, and by the spread of the furrows around her mouth I see
she was tryin' to crack a smile.

"Now," thinks I, "here's where she collects chilblains and feels the
mercury drop."

But say! would you look for it in a dream book? What does Sadie do but
pass her out the glad hand and coo away, like a pouter pigeon on a
cornice, about being tickled to see her again. Oh, they get me dizzy,
women do!

That wa'n't a marker though, to the reverse English carom Sadie takes
after we'd got into a cab and started for her hotel. Was there a jolly
for me, or a "Thank you, Shorty, I've had the time of my life?" Nothin'
like it. She just slumped in