ou're in
Geisenheimer's you have to smell Geisenheimer's, because it leaves no
chance for competition.

'Keep working,' I said to Charlie. 'It looks to me as if we are going
back in the betting.'

'Uh, huh!' he says, too busy to blink.

'Do some of those fancy steps of yours. We need them in our business.'

And the way that boy worked--it was astonishing!

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Izzy Baermann, and he wasn't
looking happy. He was nerving himself for one of those quick referee's
decisions--the sort you make and then duck under the ropes, and run
five miles, to avoid the incensed populace. It was this kind of thing
happening every now and then that prevented his job being perfect.
Mabel Francis told me that one night when Izzy declared her the winner
of the great sporting contest, it was such raw work that she thought
there'd have been a riot. It looked pretty much as if he was afraid the
same thing was going to happen now. There wasn't a doubt which of us
two couples was the one that the customers wanted to see win that
Love-r-ly Silver Cup. It was a walk-over for Mrs Charlie, and Charlie
and I were simply among those present.

But Izzy had his duty to do, and drew a salary for doing it, so he
moistened his lips, looked round to see that his strategic railways
weren't blocked, swallowed twice, and said in a husky voice:

'Num-bah ten, please re-tiah!'

I stopped at once.

'Come along,' said I to Charlie. 'That's our exit cue.'

And we walked off the floor amidst applause.

'Well,' says Charlie, taking out his handkerchief and attending to his
brow, which was like the village blacksmith's, 'we didn't do so bad,
did we? We didn't do so bad, I guess! We--'

And he looked up at the balcony, expecting to see the dear little wife,
draped over the rail, worshipping him; when, just as his eye is moving
up, it gets caught by the sight of her a whole heap lower down than he
had expected--on the floor, in fact.

She wasn't doing much in the worshipping line just at that moment. She
was too busy.

It was a regular triumphal progress for the kid. She and her partner
were doing one or two rounds now for exhibition purposes, like the
winning couple always do at Geisenheimer's, and the room was fairly
rising at them. You'd have thought from the way they were clapping that
they had been betting all their spare cash on her.

Charlie gets her well focused, then he lets his jaw drop, till he
pretty near b