"If you'd had that grip on you, I guess you'd have thought it was the real thing," says I. "But here's a little tip I want to pass on to you: Don't go spreadin' this josh business around the lot, or your show'll be minus a star act. I'll stand for all the private kiddin' you can hand out, but I've got my objections to playin' a public joke-book part. Now, will you quit?"
He was mighty disappointed at havin' to do it, but he gave his word, and I makes tracks up stairs, glad enough to be let off so easy.
"It was a queer kind of a faint, if that's what it was," says I to myself. "I'll bet I fights shy of anything more of the kind that I sees comin' my way. This is what I gets for strayin' so far from Broadway."
But a little thing like that don't interfere with my sleepin', when slumber's on the card, and I proceeds to tear off what was due me on the eight-hour sched., and maybe a little more.
I didn't get a sight of Miriam all day long. Not that I was strainin' my eyes any. There was somethin' better to look at—Sadie, for instance. 'Course Pinckney was bossin' the show, but she was bossin' him, and anyone else that was handy. They were goin' to pull off the racket in the ball-room, and Sadie found a lot to do to it. She's a hummer, Sadie is. Maybe she wa'n't brought up among bow-legged English butlers and a lot of Swedish maids, but she's learned the trick of gettin' 'em to break their necks for her whenever she says the word.
All the forenoon more folks kept comin' on every train, and there was two rows of them big, deep-breathin' tourin' cars in the stables. By dinnertime Rockywold looked like a Saratoga hotel durin' the racin' season. Chappies were playin' lawn tennis, and luggin' golf bags around, and keepin' the ivories rollin', while the front walks and porches might have been Fifth-ave. on a Monday afternoon, from the dry-goods that was bein' sported there.
I stowed myself away in a corner of the billiard-room and didn't mix much, but I was takin' it all in. Not that I was feelin' lonesome, or anything like that. I likes to see any sort of fun, even if it ain't just my kind. And besides, there was more or less in the bunch that I knew first-rate. But I don't care about pushin' to the front until I gets the call.
So everything runs along smooth, and I was figurin' on makin' a late train down to Primrose Park after I'd done my little turn. I didn't care much about seein' the show, so I stuck to the dressin'-room until they sends word that it was my next. We'd had the punchin'-bag apparatus rigged up in the forenoon, and there wasn't anything left to be done but hook on the leather and spread out the mat.
Pinckney was doin' the announcin' and the jolly he gives me before he lugs me out was somethin' fierce. I reckon I was blushin' some when I went on. I took just one squint at the mob and felt a chill down my spine. Say, it's one thing to step up before a gang of sports in a hall, and another to prance out in ring clothes on a platform in front of two or three hundred real ladies and gents wearin' their evenin' togs.
There I was, though, and the crowd doin' the hurrah act for all it was worth. When I gets the bag goin' I feels better, and whatever grouch I has against Pinckney for not lettin' me wear my gym. suit I puts into short-arm punches on the pigskin. The stunt seemed to take. I could tell that by the buzz that came over the footlights. No matter what you're doin', whether it's makin' campaign speeches, or stoppin' a comer in six rounds, it's always a help to know that you've got the crowd with you.