e day, two day, a week. Well, what
happens? I am charm, I am fascinate, I am become her slave. I make to
resist. I say to myself: 'You! You are of the noble Austrian blood; the
second-cousin of your mother is a grand duke; you must not forget.' Then
again I see Sadie. Pouff! I have no longer pride; but only I luff. It is
enough. I ask of her: 'Madam Deepworth, where is the father of you?' She
say he is not. 'Then the uncle of you?' I demand. She say: 'I'm shy on
uncles.' 'But to who, then,' I ask, 'must I declare my honorable
passion?' 'Oh,' she say, 'tell it to Shorty McCabe.' Ha! I leap, I
bound! I go to M. Pinckney. 'Tell me,' I say, 'where is to be found one
Shorty McCabe?' And he sends me to you. I am come."

On the level, now, it went like that. Maybe I've left out some of the
frills, but that was the groundwork of his remarks.

"Yes," says I, "you're a regular come-on. I guess the adorable Sadie has
handed you a josh. She's equal to it."

But that got by him. He just stood there, teeterin' up and down on his
patent leathers, and grinnin' like a monkey.

"I say," says I, "she's run you on a sidin', dropped you down a
coal-hole. Do you get wise?"

Did he? Not so you would notice it. He goes on grinnin' and teeterin',
like he was on exhibition in a museum and I was the audience. Then he
gets a view of himself in the glass over the safe there, and begins to
pat down his astrakhan thatch, and punch up his puff tie, and dust off
his collar. Ever see one of these peroxide cloak models doin' a march
past the show windows on her day off? Well, the Baron had all those
motions and a few of his own. He was ornamental, all right, and it
wa'n't any news to him either.

About then, though, I begins to wonder if I hadn't been a little too
sure about Sadie. There's no tellin', when it comes to women, you know;
and when it hit me that perhaps, after all, she'd made up her mind to
tag this one from Austria, you could have fried an egg on me anywhere.

"Look here, Patchouli," says I. "Is this straight about you and Sadie?
Are you the winner?"

"Ah, the adorable Sadie!" says he, comin' back to earth and slappin' his
solar plexus with one hand.

"We've covered that ground," says I. "What I want to know is, does she
cotton to you?"

"Cot-_ton_? Cot-_ton_?" says he, humpin' his eyebrows like a French
ballad singer.

"Are you the fromage?" says I. "Is she as stuck on you as you are on
yourself? Have you made good?"

He mu