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 tha