He makes a stab at sayin' something, but his breath hadn't come back yet. He revives enough though, to take a look at his clothes. Then he works his silk dicer up off'm his ears, and has a peek at that. It was a punky lid, all right, but it had saved a lot of wear on his koko when he made that slide for home plate and struck the wall. "Was this a long-distance run, or just a hundred-yard sprint?" says I. "Never mind, if it comes hard. I don't blame you a bit for side-steppin' a heart to heart talk with any such a rough-and-ready converser as your friend. I'd do the same myself." He looks up kind of grateful at that, and sticks out a soft, lady-like paw for me to shake. Say, that wasn't such a slow play, either! He was too groggy to say a word, but he comes pretty near winnin' me right there. I sets Swifty to work on him with the whisk-broom, hands out a glass of ice-water, and in a minute or so his voice comes back. Oh, yes, he had one. It was a little shaky, but, barrin' that, it was as smooth as mayonnaise. And language! Why, just tellin' me how much obliged he was, he near stood the dictionary on its head. There wa'n't no doubt of his warm feelin' for me by the time he was through. It was almost like bein' adopted by a rich uncle. "Oh, that's all right," says I. "You can use that couch any time the disappearin' fit comes on. She was hot on the trail; eh, Monty?" "It was all a painful, absurd error," says he, "a mistaken identity, I presume. Permit me to make myself known to you," and he shoves out his card. Rasmulli Pinphoodle, J. R. D.--that was the way it read. "Long ways from Smith, ain't it?" says I. "The first of it sounds like a Persian rug." "My Hindu birth name," says he. "I'd have bet you wa'n't a domestic filler," says I. "The Pinphoodle is English, ain't it?" He smiles like I'd asked him to split a pint with me, and says that it was. "But the tag on the end--J. R. D.--I passes up," says I. "Don't stand for Judge of Rent Dodgers, does it?" "Those letters," says he, makin' another merry face, "represent the symbols of my Vedic progression." "If I'd stopped to think once more, I'd fetched that," says I. It was a jolly. I've never had the Vedic progression--anyways, not had enough to know it at the time--but I wasn't goin' to let him stun me that way.