Only the duchess didn't exactly seem to connect with the joke. She sat stolidly through the whole performance in a kind of a daze, and then afterwards she says: "It wasn't what I'd call really clever, you know; but, my word! the poor things tried hard enough." Just before I starts for home I hunts up Leonidas. He was givin' orders to his boss canvasman when I found him, and feelin' the pulse of his one-lunger, that Mrs. Brassett's chauffeur had tinkered up. "Well, Leonidas," says I, "are you goin' to put the Shakespeare-Sagawa combination on the ten-twenty-thirt circuit?" "Not if I can prove an alibi," says he. "I've just paid a week's advance salary to that crowd of Melbas and Booths, and told 'em to go sign contracts with Frohman and Hammerstein. I may be running a medicine show, but I've got some professional pride left. Now I'm going back to New York and engage an educated pig and a troupe of trained dogs to fill out the season." The last I saw of Montana Kate she was pacin' up and down the station platform, readin' a copy of "Romeo and Juliet." Ain't they the pippins, though? VII RINKEY AND THE PHONY LAMP Say, for gettin' all the joy that's comin' to you, there's nothin' like bein' a mixer. The man who travels in one class all the time misses a lot. And I sure was mixin' it when I closes with Snick Butters and Sir Hunter Twiggle all in the same day. Snick had first place on the card. He drifts into the Studio early in the forenoon, and when I sees the green patch over the left eye I knows what's comin'. He's shy of a lamp on that side, you know--uses the kind you buy at the store, when he's got it; and when he ain't got it, he wants money. I s'pose if I was wise I'd scratched Snick off my list long ago; but knowin' him is one of the luxuries I've kept up. You know how it is with them old time friends you've kind of outgrown but hate to chuck in the discard, even when they work their touch as reg'lar as rent bills. But Snick and me played on the same block when we was kids, and there was a time when I looked for Snick to be boostin' me, 'stead of me boostin' him. He's one of the near-smarts that you're always expectin' to make a record, but that never does. Bright lookin' boy, neat dresser, and all that, but never stickin' to one thing long enough to make good. You've seen 'em. "Hello, Snick!" says I, as he levels the single barrel on me. "I see you've pulled down the shade again. What's happened to that memorial window of yours this time?" "Same old thing," says he. "It's in at Simpson's for five, and a bookie's got the five." "And now you want to negotiate a second mortgage, eh?" says I. That was the case. He tells me his newest job is handlin' the josh horn on the front end of one of these Rube waggons, and just because the folks from Keokuk and Painted Post said that lookin' at the patch took their minds off seein' the skyscrapers, the boss told him he'd have to chuck it or get the run.