I was lookin' for her to revise that notion when I sees the kind of company Pinckney was luggin' up to spring on us. I'd seen their pictures in the papers, and knew 'em on sight. And the pair wasn't anything but the top of the bunch. You know the Twombley-Cranes, that cut more ice in July than the Knickerbocker Trust does all winter. Why say, to see the house rubber at 'em as they came sailin' our way, you'd thought they was paid performers stepping up to do their act. It was a case of bein' in the lime-light for us, from that on. "Hully chee!" says I. "Here's where I ought to fade." But there wasn't any show to duck; for Felix was chasin' over some more chairs, and Pinckney was doin' the honors all round, and the first thing I knew we was a nice little fam'ly party, chuckin' repartee across the pink candle shades, and behavin' like star boarders that had paid in advance. It was Sadie, though, that had the centre of the stage, and I'll be staggered if she didn't jump in to make her bluff good. She let out everything that she shouldn't have told, from how she used to wait on table at her mother's boarding-house, to the way she'd got the frozen face ever since she came to town. "But what am I expected to do?" says she. "I've got no Hetty Green grip on my bankbook. There's a whole binful of the 'Drowsy Drop' dollars, and I'm willing to throw 'em on the bonfire just as liberal as the next one, only I want a place around the ring. There's no fun in playing a lone hand, is there? I've been trying to find out what's wrong with me, anyway?" "My dear girl," says Mrs. Twombley-Crane, "there's nothing wrong with you at all. You're simply delicious. Isn't she, now, Freddie?" And Freddie just grinned. Say, some men is born wise. "Professor McCabe and I are exchanging views on the coming light-weight contest," says he. "Don't mind us, my dear." Perhaps that's what we were gassin' about, or why is a hen. You can search me. I was that rattled with Sadie's nerve display that I didn't follow anything else real close. But when it was all over, and I'd been brought to by a peep at the bill the waiter handed me, I couldn't figure out whether she'd made a bull's-eye or rung in a false alarm. One thing I did notice, as we sails out, and that was the stout Pettigrew person who'd passed Sadie the pickled pig's foot on the avenue that afternoon. She was sitting opposite a skimpy little runt with a bald head, at a table up near the door where the waiters juggled soup over her feathers every time they passed. Her eyes were glued on Sadie as we came up, and by the spread of the furrows around her mouth I see she was tryin' to crack a smile. "Now," thinks I, "here's where she collects chilblains and feels the mercury drop." But say! would you look for it in a dream book? What does Sadie do but pass her out the glad hand and coo away, like a pouter pigeon on a cornice, about being tickled to see her again. Oh, they get me dizzy, women do!