'em
off, with a fiver extra for luck, they drops out of a window onto the
lawn and pikes off like a squad of jail-breakers. I was some easier in
my mind then; but I wa'n't joyful, at that.

You see, Mr. Jarvis had treated me so white, and he was such a nice
decent chap, that I was feelin' mighty cut up about givin' him the quick
exit right before the girl he was gone on. Sure, he'd played for it; but
I could see I shouldn't have done it. Knock-outs ain't in my line any
more, anyway; but to spring one right before women folks, and in a swell
joint like Blenmont--say, it made me feel like a last year's straw hat
on the first day of June.

"Shorty," says I, "you're a throw-back. You better quit travelin' with
real gents, and commence eatin' with your knife again. Here's Mr. Jarvis
gets you to help him out in a little society affair, and you overdoes it
so bad he can't square himself in a hundred years. Back to the junction
for yours."

Well, I was that grouchy I wouldn't look at myself in the glass. But I
rubs down and gets into my Rialto wardrobe that I'd brought along in a
suit-case. Then I waits for Jarvis. Oh, I didn't want to see him, but it
was up to me to say my little piece.

It was near an hour before he shows up, wearin' his bathrobe, an'
lookin' as gay as a flower-shop window.

"On the level, now," says I, before he had a show to make any play at
me, "if I'd known what a pinhead I was, I'd stayed in the cushion. How
bad did I queer you?"

"Shorty," says he, shovin' out his hand, "you're a brick."

"An' cracked in the bakin', eh?" says I.

"But you don't understand," says he. "She's mine, Shorty! The Lady
Evelyn--she's promised to marry me."

"Serves you right," says I, as we shakes hands. "But how does she allow
to get back at me?"

"Oh, she knows all about everything now," says Jarvis, "and she wants to
apologize."

Say, he wasn't stringin' me either. Blow me if she didn't. And sister?
"You're horrid!" says she. "Perfectly horrid. So there!" Now can you
beat 'em? But, as I've said before, when it comes to figurin' on what
women or horses'll do, I'm a four-flusher.

CHAPTER VII

No, I ain't goin' out to Blenmont these days. Jarvis does his exercisin'
here, and he says his mother's havin' a ball room made out of that gym.

I've been stickin' to the pavements, like I said I would. Lookin'
cheerful, too? Why not? If you'd been a minute sooner you'd heard me
wobblin' "Please, Ma-ma, nail a