Then there was ripe chances I was afraid of missin'. You see, knockin' around so much with the fat wads, I often sees spots where a few dollars could be planted right. Sometimes it's a hunch on the market, and then again it's a straight steer on a slice of foot front that's goin' cheap. I do a lot of dickerin' that way. Well, I'd just pushed through a deal that leaves me considerable on velvet, and I was feelin' kind of flush and sassy, when Mr. Ogden calls me up, and wants to know if I can make use of a gilt edged bargain. "Oh, I don't know," says I. "What's it look like?" "It's The Toreador," says he. "Sounds good," says I. "How much?" "Cost me forty thousand two years ago," says he, "but I'm turning it over for twenty-five to the first bidder." Well, say, when old man Ogden slings cold figures at you like that, you can gamble that he's talkin' straight. "I'm it, then," says I. "Fifteen down, ten on mortgage." "That suits me," says he. "I'll have the papers made out to-day." "And say," says I, "what is this Toreador, anyway; a race horse, or an elevator apartment?" Would you guess it? He'd hung up the receiver. That's what I got for bein' sporty. But I wa'n't goin' to renig at that stage. I fills out me little blue check and sends her in, and that night I goes to bed without knowin' what it is that I've passed up my coin for. It must have been near noon the next day, for I'd written a letter and got my check book stubs added up so they come within two or three hundred of what the bank folks made it, when a footman in white panties and a plum colored coat drifts through the Studio door. "Is this Professor McCabe, sir?" says he. "Yep," says I. "There's a lady below, sir," says he. "Can she come up?" "It ain't reg'lar," says I, "but I s'pose there's no dodgin' her. Tell her to come ahead." Say, I wa'n't just fixed up for receivin' carriage comp'ny. When I writes and figures I gets more mussed up than as if I'd been in a free-for-all. I'd shed my coat on one chair, my vest on another, slipped off my suspenders, rumpled my hair, and got ink on me in seventeen places. But I didn't have sense enough to say I was out. In a minute or so there was a click-click on the stairs, I gets a whiff of l'Issoir Danube, and in comes a veiled lady. She was a brandied peach; from the outside lines, anyway. Them clothes of hers couldn't have left Paris more'n a month before, and they clung to her like a wet undershirt to a fat man. And if you had any doubts as to whether or no she had the goods, all you had to do was to squint at the big amethyst in the handle of the gold lorgnette she wore around her neck. For a Felix-Tiffany combination, she was it. You've seen women of that kind--reg'lar walkin' expense accounts. "So you are Shorty McCabe, are you?" says she, givin' me a customs inspector look-over, and kind of sniffin'. "Sorry I don't suit," says I. "How odd!" says she. "I must make a note of that."