vin' me the cue to the whole game.

Seems that mother's steady job in life was to get him married off to
some one that suited her for a daughter-in-law. She'd been at it for
five or six years; but Jarvis had always blocked her moves, until Lady
Evelyn shows up. I guessed that he'd picked her out himself, and was
gettin' along fine, when mother begins to mix in and arrange things.
Evelyn shies at that, and commences to hand Jarvis the frapped smile.
This little visit to the sparrin' exhibition the old lady had planned
for Evelyn's special benefit.

"But hang it all!" says Jarvis, "I couldn't stand up there and show off,
like a Sunday-school boy spouting a piece. Made me feel like a silly
ass, you know."

"You looked the part," says I. "About one more of those stunts, and Lady
Evelyn'll want to adopt the two of us."

"No more," says he. "She must think I'm a milksop. Why, she's got
brothers that are officers in the British army, fellows who get
themselves shot, and win medals, and all that sort of thing."

Well, I was sorry for Jarvis; for the girl was a good looker, all right,
and they'd have mated up fine. But I'm no _schatchen_. Physical
culture's my game, an' I ain't takin' on no marriage bureau as a side
line. So we shook hands and called it a canceled contract. Then Jarvis
jerks those circus horses out of a bow-knot and rounds the corner on one
wheel, while I climbs aboard the choo-choo cars and gets back near
Broadway.

I wasn't lookin' to run across Jarvis again, seein' as how me and him
has our own particular sets; but 'twasn't more'n three days before he
shows up at the Studio. He was lookin' down an' out, too.

"Dropped in for a real rough game of pussy-wants-a-corner," says I, "or
shall we make it ring-around-the-rosy?"

"I say, now, Shorty," says he, "if you'd had it rubbed in as hard as I
have, you'd let up."

"Heard from Lady Evelyn?" says I.

He kind of groaned and fell into a chair. "I tried to tell her about
it," says he; "but she wouldn't listen to a word. She only asked if you
were a professor of dancing."

"Hully chee!" says I. "Say, you tell her from me that I'm a cloak-model,
an' proud of it. Dancin'-master, eh? Do you stand for a josh like that?"

"Hang me if I do!" says he, jumpin' up and measurin' off three-foot
steps across the floor. "The Lady Evelyn's going back to England in a
few days, but before she leaves I want her to have a chance to--well, to
see that I'm not the sort she