th a spat, grabs her what-d'ye-call-it up away from her ankles
with both hands, and sprints down the hall as if she was makin' for the
last car.

"Say," says I, gettin' me neck out of crook, "I wish that thought had
come to her sooner. I feel as if I'd been squeezed by a pair of
ice-tongs. If she can hug like that in her sleep, what could she do when
she was wide awake?"

"Shorty," says Pinckney, with his face as solemn as a preacher's, "I'm
pained and astonished at this."

"Me, too," says I.

"Don't jest," says he. "This looks to me like an attempt at kidnapping."

"If you'd had that grip on you, I guess you'd have thought it was the
real thing," says I. "But here's a little tip I want to pass on to you:
Don't go spreadin' this josh business around the lot, or your show'll be
minus a star act. I'll stand for all the private kiddin' you can hand
out, but I've got my objections to playin' a public joke-book part. Now,
will you quit?"

He was mighty disappointed at havin' to do it, but he gave his word, and
I makes tracks up stairs, glad enough to be let off so easy.

"It was a queer kind of a faint, if that's what it was," says I to
myself. "I'll bet I fights shy of anything more of the kind that I sees
comin' my way. This is what I gets for strayin' so far from Broadway."

But a little thing like that don't interfere with my sleepin', when
slumber's on the card, and I proceeds to tear off what was due me on the
eight-hour sched., and maybe a little more.

I didn't get a sight of Miriam all day long. Not that I was strainin' my
eyes any. There was somethin' better to look at--Sadie, for instance.
'Course Pinckney was bossin' the show, but she was bossin' him, and
anyone else that was handy. They were goin' to pull off the racket in
the ball-room, and Sadie found a lot to do to it. She's a hummer, Sadie
is. Maybe she wa'n't brought up among bow-legged English butlers and a
lot of Swedish maids, but she's learned the trick of gettin' 'em to
break their necks for her whenever she says the word.

All the forenoon more folks kept comin' on every train, and there was
two rows of them big, deep-breathin' tourin' cars in the stables. By
dinnertime Rockywold looked like a Saratoga hotel durin' the racin'
season. Chappies were playin' lawn tennis, and luggin' golf bags around,
and keepin' the ivories rollin', while the front walks and porches might
have been Fifth-ave. on a Monday afternoon, from the dry-goods that was