hop-house and has a
bite all by my lonesome. Then I wanders back to the general offices and
tries to wind up what we'd been workin' on. But I couldn't help
wondering about Ernie. Had he just plain buffaloed me, or what? If he
had, who was his swell lady friend? And how did she come to be waitin'
there in the taxi? By the way she was costumed she might have been on
her way to some dinner dance on Fifth Avenue. That was a perfectly
spiffy evening dress she had on, what there was of it. And I could
remember jewels sparklin' here and there. Course, she was no chicken;
somewhere under thirty would have been my guess, but she sure was easy
to look at. Such eyes, too! Yes, a little starry maybe, but big and
sparkly. No wonder Ernie didn't care to look at any of our lady typists
if he had that in the background.

So I wasn't gettin' ahead very fast untanglin' them dockage contracts,
and before 11 o'clock I was yawning. I'd just decided to quit and loaf
around the station until the theater train was ready when I hears an
unsteady step in the outer office and the next minute in blows Ernie.

That is, it's somebody who looks a little as Ernie did three hours
before. But his derby is busted in on one side, one end of his wing
collar has been carried away and is ridin' up towards his left ear, his
coat is all dusty, and his face is flushed up like a new fire truck.

"For the love of soup!" says I, gaspy. "Must have been some party?"

Ernie, he braces himself by grippin' a chair-back and makes a stab at
recoverin' his usual stiff-neck pose. But it's a flat failure. So he
gives up, waves one hand around vague, and indulges in a foolish smile.

"Wha'--wha' makes you think sho--party?" he demands.

"I got second sight, Ernie," says I, "and it tells me you've been
spilled off the wagon."

"You--you think I--I've been drinkin'?" asks Ernie indignant.

"Oh, no," says I. "I should say you'd been using a funnel."

"Tha's--tha's because you have 'spischus nashur'," protests Ernie.
"Merely few glasshes. You know--bubblesh in stem."

"Champagne, eh?" says I. "Then it was a reg'lar party? Ernie, I am
surprised at you."

"You--you ain't half so shurprised as--as I am myshelf," says he,
chucklin'. "Tha's what I told Louishe."

"Oh, you mentioned it to Louise, did you?" says I. "I expect that was
the lovely lady who carted you off in the taxi?"

He nods and springs another one of them silly smiles. "Tha's ri'," says
he. "The lovely L