“Ma’am, I’m tickled t’ death.”
“Hair Von” (somethin’-r’-other), “Mister Lloyd.” (Don’t wonder she called him “Hair.” By thunder! he had a mane two feet long!) “And Mister Jones.” (I ketched that name O. K.)
“Mister Lloyd,” says the ole lady, “will you have some breakfast?”
I felt like sayin’ they ’d likely be blamed little fer me, ’cause them two gezabas was just a-hoppin’ it in to ’em. But I only answers, “Thank y’, I just et in one of them bong-tong rest’rants that’s down in a cellar, and so, ma’am, my breadbasket’s plumb full.”
I sit down on a trunk (it had a tidy over it, but I knowed it was a trunk all right), and Macie, she sit down byside me.
“Alec,” she begun,–say! she looked mighty sweet!–“t’-night is a’ awful important night in my life. I been a-studyin’ with Hair Von” (you know), “and now I’m a-goin’ to have a recital. And what d’ you think? Seenyer” (I fergit who, this minute), “the grea-a-at impressyroa, is comin’ to hear me. And he’s goin’ to put me into grand op’ra.”
“Yas,” says Long-hair, swellin’ up. “The Seenyer is my friend, and any favour––”
I turned and looked clost at Macie. Her face was all alive, she was so happy, and her eyes was dancin’. “You’re a-goin’ t’ make you’ big stab t’-night,” I says. “Wal, I shore wish you luck.”
Then I took another look at that Perfessor–and of a suddent I begun to wonder if all the cards was on the table. ’Cause he was too oily to be genuwine. And I’d saw his stripe afore–“even up on the red and white, five to one on the blue, and ten to one on the numbers.”