"Looks like we'd lost our job, Sadie," says I. "The silly old moss-agate!" says Sadie. Then I goes down and reports to Pinckney, and puts in the rest of the evenin' bein' introduced as the gent that set the Baron Patchouli up in the shoe-string business. I felt like I'd opened up a jack-pot on a four-flush, but Pinckney and the rest seemed to be having a good time, so I stuck it out. In the morning Buddy goes along back to town with me. "Say, professor," says he, pattin' a roll of twenties in his trousers pocket, "I wouldn't pass this along to anyone else, but if you want to connect with a hatful of easy coin, just plunge on Candy Boy." "That's your beanery tip, is it?" says I. "Much obliged, Buddy, but I guess after the bookies get all you and Mrs. Pell are goin' to throw at 'em they won't need mine." * * * * * See? It was up to me to push home a great moral lesson, and I done my best. But what's the use? Next mornin' I takes up the paper and reads how Candy Boy wins, heads apart. CHAPTER X But say, I guess Buddy'll work out all right. There's good stuff in him. Anyways, I ain't losin' my eyesight, tryin' to follow his curves. And my date book's been full lately. That's the way I like it. If you know how to take things there's a whole lot of fun in just bein' alive; ain't there? Now look at the buffo combination I've been up against. First off I meets Jarvis--you know, Mr. Jarvis of Blenmont, who's billed to marry that English girl, Lady Evelyn, next month. Well, Jarvis he was all worked up. Oh, you couldn't guess it in a week. It was an awful thing that happened to him. Just as he's got his trunk packed for England, where the knot-tyin' is to take place, he gets word that some old lady that was second cousin to his mother, or something like that, has gone and died and left him all her property. "Real thoughtless of her, wa'n't it?" says I. "Well," says Jarvis, lookin' kind of foolish, "I expect she meant well enough. I don't mind the bonds, and that sort of thing, but there's this Nightingale Cottage. Now, what am I to do with that?" "Raise nightingales for the trade," says I. Jarvis ain't one of the joshin' kind, though, same as Pinckney. He had this weddin' business on his mind, and there wa'n't much room for anything else. Seems the old lady who'd quit livin' was a relative he didn't know much about. "I remember seeing her only once," says Jarvis, "and then I was a little chap. Perhaps that's why I was such a favorite of hers. She always sent me a prayer-book every Christmas." "Must have thought you was hard on prayer-books," says I. "She wa'n't batty, was she?" Jarvis wouldn't say that; but he didn't deny that there might have been a few cobwebs in the belfry. Aunt Amelia--that's what he called her--had lived by herself for so long, and had coaxed up such a case of nerves, that there was no tellin'. The family didn't even know she was abroad until they heard she'd died there.