On the level, now, it went like that. Maybe I've left out some of the frills, but that was the groundwork of his remarks. "Yes," says I, "you're a regular come-on. I guess the adorable Sadie has handed you a josh. She's equal to it." But that got by him. He just stood there, teeterin' up and down on his patent leathers, and grinnin' like a monkey. "I say," says I, "she's run you on a sidin', dropped you down a coal-hole. Do you get wise?" Did he? Not so you would notice it. He goes on grinnin' and teeterin', like he was on exhibition in a museum and I was the audience. Then he gets a view of himself in the glass over the safe there, and begins to pat down his astrakhan thatch, and punch up his puff tie, and dust off his collar. Ever see one of these peroxide cloak models doin' a march past the show windows on her day off? Well, the Baron had all those motions and a few of his own. He was ornamental, all right, and it wa'n't any news to him either. About then, though, I begins to wonder if I hadn't been a little too sure about Sadie. There's no tellin', when it comes to women, you know; and when it hit me that perhaps, after all, she'd made up her mind to tag this one from Austria, you could have fried an egg on me anywhere. "Look here, Patchouli," says I. "Is this straight about you and Sadie? Are you the winner?" "Ah, the adorable Sadie!" says he, comin' back to earth and slappin' his solar plexus with one hand. "We've covered that ground," says I. "What I want to know is, does she cotton to you?" "Cot-_ton_? Cot-_ton_?" says he, humpin' his eyebrows like a French ballad singer. "Are you the fromage?" says I. "Is she as stuck on you as you are on yourself? Have you made good?" He must have got a glimmer from that; for he rolls his eyes some more, breathes once like an air-brake bein' cut out, and says: "Our luff is like twin stars in the sky--each for the other shines." "It's as bad as all that, is it?" says I. "Well, all I've got to say is that I'd never thought it of Sadie; and if she sent you down here on approval, you can tell her I'm satisfied if she is." I figured that would jar him some, but it didn't. He looked as pleased as though I'd told him he was the ripest berry in the box, and before I knew what was comin' he had the long-lost-brother tackle on me, and was almost weepin' on my neck, splutterin' joy in seven different kinds of language. Just then Swifty Joe bobs his head in through the gym. door, springs that gorilla grin of his, and ducks back. "Break away!" says I. "I don't want to spoil the looks of anythin' that Sadie's picked out to frame, but this thing has gone about far enough. If you're glad, and she's glad, then I ain't got any kick comin'. Only don't rub it in." [Illustration: He had the long-lost-brother tackle on me.] Say, it was like talkin' to a deaf man, sayin' things to the Baron. "She's mine, yes?" says he. "I have your permission, Professeur McCabe?"