I expect it was a good deal of a proposition to spring on a female party. No wonder she choked up over it.
"If I thought you were just guying me," says she, "I—I'd——"
"Here's a cable blank," says I. "Frame up your call to the Baron while I state the case to Mr. Steele."
He couldn't see it at all, J. Bayard couldn't. "What!" says he. "Waste all that money on such a wretch! Why, the woman is unworthy of even the most——"
"What's that got to do with it?" says I. "Pyramid didn't put that in the bill of partic'lars, did he? Maybe he had doubts about himself. And how would we qualify? How would you? Come, what's your battin' average, Steele, in the worthy league?"
J. Bayard squirms a little at that, and then hunches his shoulders. "Oh, if you're going to put it that way," says he, "go ahead. But when she starts to be a Baroness, I'd like to see her."
"You'll be there to hand her the tickets," says I. "You'll get her ready. That's part of your job."
He saw the point. And, say, he did his work thorough. I saw no more of Mrs. Shaw until nearly two weeks later, when Steele towed me down to the steamer.
"Which one?" says I, lookin' at the crowd along the rail. "Ah, come off! That with the veils and the stunnin' figure—the one wavin' this way? That ain't never Mrs. Fletcher Shaw!"
"That's Josie," says he. "And before the end of the month she'll be the Baroness Von Blatzer. Changed? Why, I hardly recognized her myself after her first day's shopping! She must have been quite a beauty once. But what a wreck she was when——"