“Well, I'm only an amateur, but still I think I might, to quote Billy again, make a stab at it. A little while ago you said I had a strong sense of sportsmanship. Do you care to bet me about ten dollars I cannot give you the fat party's initials—all three of them?”
He gazed at her owlishly. She was the most perfectly amazing girl he had ever met; he was certain she would win the ten dollars from him, but then it was worth ten dollars to know for a certainty whether she was perfect or possessed of a slight flaw; so he silently drew forth a wallet that would have choked a cow and skinned off a ten-dollar gold certificate of the United States of America.
“I'm game,” he mumbled. “To quote Billy again: 'Put up or shut up.'”
“The fat gentleman's initials are E. P. J.”
“By the twelve apostles, Peter, Simon——”
“Don't blaspheme, Mr. Webster.”
He stood up and shook himself. “When you order the tea,” he said very distinctly, “please have mine cold. I need a bracer after that. Take the ten. You've won it.”
“Thanks ever so much,” she answered in a matter-of-fact tone and tucked the bill inside of her shirtwaist. “I am a very poor woman and—'Every little bit added to what you've got makes just a little bit more,'” she carolled, swaying her lithe, beautiful body and snapping her fingers like a cabaret dancer.
He could have groaned with the futility of his overwhelming desire for her; it even occurred to him what a shame it was to waste a marvel like her on a callow young pup like Billy, who had fought so many deadly skirmishes with Dan Cupid that a post-impressionistic painting of the Geary heart must resemble a pincushion. Then he remembered that this was an ungenerous, a traitorous thought, and that he had not paid the lady her fee.
“Well, what's the tariff?” he asked.