to her corner and switched on the boo-hoos
like a girl that's been kept after school.

"Enjoy yourself, Sadie," says I. "Only remember that this is a hansom,
not a street sprinkler."

That didn't fetch her; so after a while I tries her again. "What went
wrong?" says I. "Was she stringin' you, or was it the way I wore my face
that queered the show?"

"It's all right, Shorty," says she between weeps. "And nothing's wrong,
nothing at all. Mrs. What's-Her-Name's asked me to stay a week with her
at their Newport place, and old Mrs. Pettigrew will turn green before
morning thinking of me, and I've shaken the hoodoo at last. But it all
came so much in a lump that I just had to turn on the sprayer. You know
how I feel, don't you, Shorty?"

"Sure," says I, "just as well as if you'd sent me a picture postal of
the place you boarded last."

But say, I turned the trick, didn't I? I didn't know what was comin' out
of the box, of course; and maybe I was some jolted at throwin' three
sixes to a pair, but there they lay.

No, I ain't goin' into the boostin' line as a reg'lar thing; but I guess
if any amateur in the business gets a rose nailed on him, I ought to be
the gent. Not?

CHAPTER VIII

Did you shut the hall door? That's right. There's no tellin' what's
liable to float in here any time. Say, if they don't quit it, I'll get
to be one of these nervous prostraters, that think themselves sick abed
without half tryin'. Sure, I'm just convalescin' from the last shock.

How? Now make a guess. Well, it was this way: I was sittin' right here
in the front office, readin' the sportin' dope and takin' me reg'lar
mornin' sunbath, when the door-buzzer goes off, and in drifts about a
hundred and ninety pounds of surprise package.

There was a foreign label on it, all right; but I didn't know until
later that it read "Made in Austria." He was a beefy sort of gent, with
not much neck to speak of, and enough curly black hair to shingle a
French poodle. He was well colored, too. Beats the cars, don't it, the
good health that's wasted on some of these foreigners?

But what takes my eye most was his trousseau. Say! he was dressed to the
minute, from the pink in his buttonhole, to the mother-of-pearl gloves;
and the back of his frock coat had an in-curve such as your forty-fat
sisters dream about. Why, as far as lines went, he had Jimmy Hackett and
Robert Mantell on the back shelf. Oh, he was a crusher, sure!

"I have the purpo