"Then wire 'em to scratch the entry," says I. "I don't make any orchestra circle plays that I can dodge, and when it comes to fightin' the leather before a bunch of peacock millinery I renigs every time. I'll put on Swifty Joe as a sub., if you've got to have some one." Pinckney shook his head at that. "No," says he, "I'll tell Sadie she must leave you off the program." "Hold on," says I. "Was it Sadie billed me for this stunt?" He said it was. "Then I'm on the job," says I. "Oh, you can grin your ears off, I don't care." Well, that was what fetched me out to Rockywold on a Friday night, when I had a right to be watchin' the amateur try-outs at the Maryborough Club instead. The show wasn't until Saturday evenin', but Pinckney said I ought to be there for the dress rehearsal. "There's only about a dozen guests there now, so you needn't get skittish," says he. And a dozen don't go far towards fillin' up a place like Rockywold. Say, if I had the price, I'd like a shack where I could take care of more or less comp'ny without settin' up cot beds, but I'll be blistered if I can see the fun in runnin' a free hotel like that. These amateur shows are apt to be pretty punk, but I could see that, barrin' myself, there was a fair aggregation of talent on hand. The star was a googoo-eyed girl who did a barefoot specialty, recitin' pomes to music, and accompanyin' herself with a kind of parlor hoochee-coochee that would have drawn capacity houses at Dreamland. Then there was a pretty boy who could do things to the piano, a funeral-faced duck that could tell funny stories, and a bunch of six or eight likely-lookin' ladies and gents who'd laid themselves out to prance through what they called a minuet. Lastly there was me an' Miriam. She was one of these limp, shingle-chested girls, Miriam was. She didn't have much to say, so I didn't take any particular notice of her. But at the rehearsal I got next to the fact that she could tease music out of a violin in great style. It was all right if you shut your eyes, for Miriam wasn't what you'd call a pastel. She was built a good deal on the lines of an L-road pillar, but that didn't bar her from wearin' one of these short-sleeved square-necked, girly-girly dresses that didn't leave you much in doubt as to her framework. Yes, Miriam could have stood a few well-placed pads. She'd lived long enough to have found that out, too, but they was missin'. I should guess that Miriam had begun exhibitin' her collar-bones to society about the time poor old John L. fought the battle of New Orleans. Yet when she snuggled the butt end of that violin down under her chin and squinted at you across the bridge, she had all the motions of a high-school girl. 'Course, I didn't dope all this out to myself at the time; for, as I was sayin', I didn't size her up special. But it all came to me afterwards--yes, yes!