"I don't ask you to go beyond your depth," says I. "It's just a case of orderin' fancy grub. I'm due to blow a lady friend of mine to the swellest kind of a supper that grows in the borough; no two-dollar tabble-doty, understand; but a special, real-lace, eighteen-carat feed, with nothing on the bill of fare that ain't spelled in French." "Ah!" says he, "something like _Barquettes Bordellaise_, _poulet en casserole_, _fraises au champagne_, and so on, eh?" "I was about to mention them very things," says I. "But my memory's on the blink. Couldn't you write 'em down, with a diagram of how they look, and whether you spear 'em with a fork, or take 'em in through a straw?" "Why, to be sure," says he. So he did, and it looked something like this: "_Consomme au fumet d'estaragon_ (chicken soup--big spoon). "_Barquettes Bordellaise_ (marrow on toast, with mushrooms--fork only). "_Fonds d'artichauts Monegosque_ (hearts of artichokes in cream sauce--fork and breadsticks)." There was a lot more to it, and it wound up with some kind of cheese with a name that sounded like breakin' a pane of glass. I threw up my hands at that. "It's no go," says I. "I couldn't learn to say all that in a month. How would it do for me to slip the waiter that program and tell him to follow copy?" "We'll do better than that?" says Pinckney. "Where's your 'phone?" Pretty soon he gets some one on the wire that he calls Felix, and they has a heart-to-heart talk in French for about ten minutes. "It's all arranged," says he. "You are to hand my card to the man at the door as you go in, and Felix will do the rest. Eleven-fifteen is the hour. But I'm surprised at you, Shorty. A lady, eh? Ah, well! In the spring the young man's fancy gently turns--" "Ah, say!" says I. "There ain't no call for any funny cracks about this. You know me, and you can guess I'm no Willie-boy. When I get a soft spot in my head, and try to win a queen, it'll be done on the dead quiet, and you won't hear no call for help. But this is a different proposition. This is a real lady, who's been locked out by the society trust, and who takes an invite from me just because we happened to know each other when we was kids." "Oh-ho!" says Pinckney, snappin' them black eyes the way he does when he gets real waked up. "That sounds quite romantic." "It ain't," says I. "It's just as reg'lar as takin' your aunt to a sacred concert." He seemed to want to know the details, though; so I told him all about Sadie, and how she'd been ruled out of her class by a lot of stiffs who wa'n't one-two-sixteen with her, either for looks or lucre.