“Is this something you dreamed, Snick,” says I, “or is it a sample of your megaphone talk?”
“You don’t believe it, of course,” says he. “That’s what I brought him up here for. Hermy, turn on the Toreador business!”
“Eh?” says I; then I sees Hermy gettin’ into position to cut loose. “Back up there! Shut it off! What do I know about judgin’ singers on the hoof? Why, he might be all you say, or as bad as I’d be willin’ to bet; but I wouldn’t know it. And what odds does it make to me, one way or another?”
“I know, Shorty,” says Snick, earnest and pleadin’; “but you’re my last hope. I’ve simply got to convince you.”
“Sorry, Snick,” says I; “but this ain’t my day for tryin’ out barytones. Besides, I got to catch a train.”
“All right,” says Snick. “Then we’ll trot along with you while I tell you about Hermy. Honest, Shorty, you’ve got to hear it!”
“If it’s as desperate as all that,” says I, “spiel away.”
And of all the plunges I ever knew Snick Butters to make,—and he sure is the dead gamest sport I ever ran across,—this one that he owns up to takin’ on Hermy had all his past performances put in the piker class.
Accordin’ to the way he deals it out, Snick had first discovered Hermy about a year ago, found him doin’ the tray balancin’ act in a porcelain lined three-off-and-draw-one parlor down on Seventh-ave. He was doin’ it bad, too,—gettin’ the orders mixed, and spillin’ soup on the customers, and passin’ out wrong checks, and havin’ the boss worked up to the assassination point.
But Hermy didn’t even know enough to be discouraged. He kept right on singsongin’ out his orders down the shaft, as cheerful as you please: “Sausage and mashed, two on the wheats, one piece of punk, and two mince, and let ’em come in a hurry! Silver!” You know how they do it in them C. B. & Q. places? Yes, corned beef and cabbage joints. With sixty or seventy people in a forty by twenty-five room, and the dish washers slammin’ crockery regardless, you got to holler out if you want the chef to hear. Hermy wa’n’t much on the shout, so he sang his orders. And it was this that gave Snick his pipedream.