.

So we made a date, and Sadie drops me at the Studio. I goes right to the
'phone and calls up Pinckney at the club. Didn't I tell you about him?
Sure, that's the one. You wouldn't think though, to see him and me
tappin' each other with the mitts, that he was a front ranker in the
smart push. But he's all of that. He's a pacemaker for the swiftest
bunch in the world. Say, if he should take to walkin' on his hands,
there wouldn't be no men's shoes sold on Fifth-ave. for a year.

Well, he shows up here about an hour later, lookin' as fresh as though
he'd just come off the farm. "Did you say something about wanting
advice, Shorty?" says he.

"I did," says I.

"Religious, or otherwise?" says he. "But it makes no difference; I'm
yours to command."

"I don't ask you to go beyond your depth," says I. "It's just a case of
orderin' fancy grub. I'm due to blow a lady friend of mine to the
swellest kind of a supper that grows in the borough; no two-dollar
tabble-doty, understand; but a special, real-lace, eighteen-carat feed,
with nothing on the bill of fare that ain't spelled in French."

"Ah!" says he, "something like _Barquettes Bordellaise_, _poulet en
casserole_, _fraises au champagne_, and so on, eh?"

"I was about to mention them very things," says I. "But my memory's on
the blink. Couldn't you write 'em down, with a diagram of how they look,
and whether you spear 'em with a fork, or take 'em in through a straw?"

"Why, to be sure," says he. So he did, and it looked something like
this:

"_Consomme au fumet d'estaragon_ (chicken soup--big spoon).

"_Barquettes Bordellaise_ (marrow on toast, with mushrooms--fork only).

"_Fonds d'artichauts Monegosque_ (hearts of artichokes in cream
sauce--fork and breadsticks)."

There was a lot more to it, and it wound up with some kind of cheese
with a name that sounded like breakin' a pane of glass.

I threw up my hands at that. "It's no go," says I. "I couldn't learn to
say all that in a month. How would it do for me to slip the waiter that
program and tell him to follow copy?"

"We'll do better than that?" says Pinckney. "Where's your 'phone?"

Pretty soon he gets some one on the wire that he calls Felix, and they
has a heart-to-heart talk in French for about ten minutes.

"It's all arranged," says he. "You are to hand my card to the man at the
door as you go in, and Felix will do the rest. Eleven-fifteen is the
hour. But I'm surprised at you, Shorty. A lady, eh? Ah