"What, him?" says I. "Not that I know about. But I've got this to tell you, Mrs. Dipworthy: if you put any high value on your new steady, you'd better chase him off this reservation." "Why, Shorty McCabe!" says she, takin' me by the shoulders and turnin' them blue eyes of hers straight at me. "My new steady? That--that woolly-haired freak?" Say, you could have slipped me into the penny slot of a gum machine. Oh, fudge! Piffle! Splash! It's a wonder when I walk I don't make a noise like a sponge--I take some things in so easy. Is it curious my head never aches? Pinckney sees how bad I was feelin', and he cuts in to tell me how things had worked out. And say, do you know what that Patchouli had done? After I left him he goes back tickled to death, and waits for an openin'. Then, one night when they was havin' a big hunt ball, or some kind of swell jinks, he tolls Sadie into the palm-room, drops to the mat on his knees, and fires off that twin-star-luff speech, beggin' her to fly with him and be his'n. As a capper he digs up that envelop, to show her there needn't be any hitch in the program. "What's this?" says Sadie, making a sudden grab and gettin' the goods. With that she lets go a string of giggles and streaks it out into the ball-room. "It is the document of our marriage," says the Baron, makin' a bold bluff. "Oh, is it?" says she, openin' the thing up, and reading it off. "Why, Baron, this doesn't give you leave to marry anyone," says Sadie; "this is a peddler's license, and here's the badge, too. If you wear this you can stand on the corner and sell shoe-laces and collar-buttons. I'd advise you to go do it." It was while the crowd was howlin' and pinnin' the fakir's tag on him that he began to froth at the mouth and tell how he was comin' down to make mincemeat of me. "That's why we followed him," says Pinckney--"to avert bloodshed." "If he had so much as touched you, Shorty," says Sadie, "I would have spent my pile to have had him sent up for life." "Oh, it wouldn't have cost that much," says I. "With me thinkin' the way I did then, maybe there wouldn't have been a whole lot left to send." Ah, look away! I ain't tellin' what Sadie did next. But say, she's a hummin'-bird, Sadie is. CHAPTER IX How about him, eh?--the two-spot of clubs in billiard cloth and buttons at the door. There's no tellin' what the Studio'll have next--maybe a sidewalk canopy and a carriage caller. Swifty Joe's gettin' ambitious. Me gettin' mixed up with that Newport push has gone to Swifty's head like a four-line notice does to the pompadour of a second row chorus girl. First off he says it's a shame I don't have a valet. "Say," says I, "don't it keep me busy enough remindin' you that I'm still able to wear my own clothes, without puttin' on an extra hand?"