"'That listens all right,' says this lad, 'providing she likes peanuts.'
"'Providing she likes 'em?' I says. 'Son,' I says, 'if that bull ever has to take the cure for the drug-habit, it'll be on account of peanuts. If you don't think she likes peanuts, a dime will win you a trip to the Holy Lands,' I says. 'Why,' I says, 'Emily's middle name is Peanuts. Offhand,' I says, 'I don't know precisely how many peanuts there are,' I says, 'because if I ever heard the exact figures, I've forgot 'em, but I'd like to lay you a little eight to five that Emily can chamber all the peanuts in the world and then set down right where she happens to be, to wait for next year's crop to come onto the market. That's how much she cares for peanuts,' I says.
"Well, that convinces him, and he hurries off to write his little piece about Emily's peanut reception. The next day, which is Friday, the announcement is in both the papers. Saturday after lunch when I strolls round to the show-shop for the matinêe, one glance around the corner from the stage entrance proves to me that our little social function is certainly starting out to be a success. The street in front is lined on both sides with dagos with peanut-stands, selling peanuts to the population as fast as they can pass 'em out; and there's a long line, mainly kids, at the box-office. I goes on in and takes a flash at the front of the house through the peephole in the curtain, and the place is already jam full. If there's one kid out there, there's a thousand, and every tiny tot has got a sack of peanuts clutched in his or her chubby fist, as the case may be. And say, listen: there's a smell in the air like a prairie fire running through a Georgia goober-king's plantation.
"I goes back to where Emily is hitched, and she's weaving to and fro on her legs and watering at the mouth until she just naturally can't control her own riparian rights. She's done smelt that smell too.
"'Honey gal,' I says to her, 'it shore looks to me like you're due to get your fullupances of the succulential ground-pea of the Sunny Southland this day.'
"She's so grateful she tries to kiss me, but I ducks. All through her turn she dribbles from the chin like a defective fire-hydrant, and I can tell that she ain't got her mind on her business. She's too busy thinking about peanuts. When she's got through and taken her bows, the manager leaves the curtain up and Emily steps back behind a rope that a couple of the hands stretches acrosst the stage, with me standing on one side of her and Windy on the other; and then a couple more hands shoves a wooden runway acrosst the orchestra rail down into one of the side aisles; and then the house-manager invites Emily's young friends to march up the runway and crosst over from left to right, handing out their free-will offerings to her as they pass.
"During this pleasant scene, as the manager explains, Emily's dauntless owner, the world-famous Professor Zendavesta Jordan, meaning Windy, will lecture on the size, dimensions, habits and quaint peculiarities of this wondrous creature. That last part suits Windy right down to the ground, him being, as I told you before, the kind of party who's never so happy as when he's started his mouth and gone away and left it running.
"For maybe a half a minute after the house-manager finishes his little spiel, the kids sort of hang back. Then the rush starts; and take it from me, little one, it's some considerable rush. Here they come up that runway—tiny tots in blue, and tiny tots in red, and tiny tots in white; tiny tots with their parents, guardians or nurses, and tiny tots without none; tiny tots that are beginning to outgrow the tiny tottering stage, and other varieties of tiny tots too numerous to mention. And clutched in each and every tiny tot's chubby hand is a bag of peanuts, five-cent size or ten-cent size, but mostly five-cent size. As Emily sees 'em coming, she smiles until she looks in the face like one of these here old-fashioned red-brick Colonial fireplaces, with an overgrown black Christmas stocking hanging down from the centre of the mantel.
"Up comes the first and foremost of the tiny tots. The Santy Claus stocking reaches out and annexes the free-will offering. There's a faint crunching sound; that there sack of peanuts has went to the bourne from out which no peanut, up until that time, has ever been known to return; and Emily is smiling benevolently and reaching out for the next sack. And behind the second kid is the third kid, and behind the third kid still more kids, and as far as the human eye can reach, there ain't nothing on the horizon of that show-shop but just kids—kids and peanuts.
"It certainly was a beauteous spectacle to behold so many of the dear little ones advancing up that runway with peanuts. To myself I says: 'I guess I'm a bad little suggester, eh, what? Here's Emily getting all this free provender and Windy talking his fool head off and the house getting all this advertising and none of us out a cent for any part of it.'