"But you don't understand," says he. "She's mine, Shorty! The Lady Evelyn--she's promised to marry me." "Serves you right," says I, as we shakes hands. "But how does she allow to get back at me?" "Oh, she knows all about everything now," says Jarvis, "and she wants to apologize." Say, he wasn't stringin' me either. Blow me if she didn't. And sister? "You're horrid!" says she. "Perfectly horrid. So there!" Now can you beat 'em? But, as I've said before, when it comes to figurin' on what women or horses'll do, I'm a four-flusher. CHAPTER VII No, I ain't goin' out to Blenmont these days. Jarvis does his exercisin' here, and he says his mother's havin' a ball room made out of that gym. I've been stickin' to the pavements, like I said I would. Lookin' cheerful, too? Why not? If you'd been a minute sooner you'd heard me wobblin' "Please, Ma-ma, nail a rose on me." But say, I'll give you the tale, and then maybe you can write your own ticket. You see, I'd left Swifty Joe runnin' the Physical Culture Studio, and I was doin' a lap up the sunny side of the avenue, just to give my holiday regalia an airing. I wasn't thinkin' a stroke, only just breathin' deep and feelin' glad I was right there and nowhere else--you know how the avenue's likely to go to your head these spring days, with the carriage folks swampin' the traffic squad, and everybody that is anybody right on the spot or hurrying to get there, and everyone of 'em as fit and finished as so many prize-winners at a fair? Well, I wasn't lookin' for anything to come my way, when all of a sudden I sees a goggle-capped tiger throw open the door of one of them plate-glass benzine broughams at the curb, and bend over like he has a pain under his vest. I was just side-steppin' to make room for some upholstered old battle-ax that I supposed owned the rig, when I feels a hand on my elbow and hear some one say: "Why, Shorty McCabe! is that you?" She was a dream, all right--one of your princess-cut girls, with the kind of clothes on that would make a turkey-red check-book turn pale. But you couldn't fool me, even if she had put a Marcelle crimp in that carroty hair of hers, and washed off the freckles and biscuit flour. You can't change Irish-blue eyes, can you? And when you've come to know a voice that's got a range from maple-sugar to mixed pickles, you don't forget it, either. Know her? Say, I was brought up next door to Sullivan's boarding-house. "You didn't take me for King Eddie, did you, Miss Sullivan?" says I. "I might by the clothes," says she, runnin' her eyes over me, "only I see you've got him beat a mile. But why the Miss Sullivan?" "Because I've mislaid your weddin'-card, and there's been other things on my mind than you since our last reunion," says I. "But I'm chawmed to meet you again, rully," and I begins to edge off.