couldn't chirk me up. I'd been keen
for lookin' the house over and seein' what I'd got in the grab; but it
was all off. Course I knew I had the rights of the thing. I'd put down
me good money, and there wa'n't any rules that could make me pull it
out. But I've lived quite some years without shovin' in where I knew I'd
get the frigid countenance, and I didn't like the idea of beginnin' now.

I couldn't go back on my record, either. In my time I've stood up in the
ring and put out my man for two thirds of the gate receipts. I ain't so
proud of that now as I was once; but I ain't never had any call to be
ashamed of the way I done it. What's more, no soubrette ever had a
chance to call herself Mrs. Shorty McCabe, and I never let 'em put my
name over the door of any Broadway jag parlor.

You got to let every man frame up his own argument, though. If these
Primrose Parkers had listed me for a tough citizen, that had come out to
smash crockery and keep the town constable busy, it wa'n't my cue to
hold any debate. All the campaign I could figure out was to back into
the wings and sell to some well-behaved stock-broker or life-insurance
grafter.

It was goin' to be tough on the Whaleys, though. I didn't let on to
Dennis, and after supper we sat on the back steps while he smoked his
cutty and gassed away about the things he was goin' to raise, and how
the flower-beds would look in a month or so. About nine o'clock he shows
me a place where I can turn in, and I listens to the roosters crowin'
most of the night.

Next mornin' I had Dennis get me a Sunday paper, and after I'd read the
sportin' notes, I turns to the suburban real estate ads. "Why not own a
home?" most of 'em asks. "I know the answer to that," says I. And say, a
Luna Park Zulu that had strayed into young Rockefeller's Bible class
would have felt about as much at home as I did there on my own porch.
The old Major was over on his porch, walkin' up and down like he was
doin' guard duty, and once in a while I could see some of the
women-folks takin' a careful squint at me from behind a window blind. If
I'm ever quarantined, it won't be any new sensation.

It wasn't exactly a weddin' breakfast kind of a time I was havin'; but I
didn't dodge it. I was just lettin' it soak in, "for the good of me
soul," as Father Connolly used to say, when I sees a pair of everfed
blacks, hitched to a closed carriage, switch in from the pike and make
for the Major's. "Company for dinner