To prove it, she makes coffee and hands it around in little brass cups. Also there’s cakes, and the old man comes in, smilin’ and rubbin’ his hands, and we has a real sociable time.
And these was the folks I’d suspected of wantin’ to carve up Spotty! Why, by the looks I saw thrown at him by them two, I knew they thought him the finest thing that ever happened. Just by the way Mareena reached out sly to pat his hair when she passed, you could see how it was.
So I wished ’em luck and hurried back to report before Pinckney sent a squad of reserves after me.
“Well!” says he, the minute I gets in. “Let me know the worst at once.”
“I will,” says I. “He’s married.” It was all I could do, too, to make him believe the yarn.
“By Jove!” says he. “Think of a chap like Spotty Cahill tumbling into a romance like that! And on Fourth-ave!”
“It ain’t so well advertised as some other lanes in this town,” says I; “but it’s a great street. Say, what puzzled me most about the whole business, though, was the new name they had for Spotty. Sareef! What in blazes does that mean?”
“Probably a title of some sort,” says Pinckney. “Like sheik, I suppose.”
“But what does a Sareef have to do?” says I.
“Do!” says Pinckney. “Why, he’s boss of the caravan. He—he sits around in the sun and looks picturesque.”