his? Not on your ping pongs! Fade,
Aunty, fade!"

Then the Bishop is pushed up to take his turn. He says he is glad to
meet Maggie, and hopes she likes her new job. Maggie says she does.
She lets out, too, that she's engaged to the gentleman what does a
refined acrobatic specialty in the third attraction on the left, and
that when they close in the fall he's goin' to coach her up so's they
can do a double turn in the continuous houses next winter at from sixty
to seventy-five per, each. So if she ever irons another shirt, it'll
be just to show that she ain't proud.

And that's where the rescue expedition goes out of business with a low,
hollow plunk. Among the three of 'em not one has a word left to say.

"Well, folks," says I, "what are we here for? Shall we finish the
evenin' like we begun? We're only alive once, you know, and this is
the only Coney there is. How about it?"

Did we? Inside of two minutes Maggie has sold us four entrance
tickets, and we're headed for the biggest and wooziest thriller to be
found in the lot.

"Shorty," says the Bishop, as we settles ourselves for a ride home on
the last boat, "I trust I have done nothing unseemly this evening."

"What! You?" says I. "Why, Bishop, you're a reg'lar ripe old sport;
and any time you feel like cuttin' loose again, with Aunt Isabella or
without, just send in a call for me."

III

UP AGAINST BENTLEY

Say, where's Palopinto, anyway? Well neither did I. It's somewhere
around Dallas, but that don't help me any. Texas, eh? You sure don't
mean it! Why, I thought there wa'n't nothin' but one night stands down
there. But this Palopinto ain't in that class at all. Not much! It's
a real torrid proposition. No, I ain't been there; but I've been up
against Bentley, who has.

He wa'n't mine, to begin with. I got him second hand. You see, he
come along just as I was havin' a slack spell. Mr. Gordon--yes,
Pyramid Gordon--he calls up on the 'phone and says he's in a hole.
Seems he's got a nephew that's comin' on from somewhere out West to
take a look at New York, and needs some one to keep him from fallin'
off Brooklyn Bridge.

"How's he travellin'," says I; "tagged, in care of the conductor?"

"Oh, no," says Mr. Gordon. "He's about twenty-two, and able to take
care of himself anywhere except in a city like this." Then he wants to
know how I'm fixed for time.

"I got all there is on the clock," says I.

"And would you be wil