"Glad I was born lucky," thinks I, but I thought it under my breath.
"Is my Monty hiding in that room?" says she, jabbin' a finger at the gym.
"Cross my heart, he ain't," says I.
"I don't believe you could think quick enough to lie," says she, and with that she flips out about as fast as she came in.
I didn't stir until I hears her hit the lower hall. Then I bolts the door, goes and calls Swifty down off the top of the swingin' rope, and we comes to a parade rest alongside the couch.
"Monty, dear Monty," says I, "the cyclone's passed out to sea. Come out and give up your rain check."
He backs out feet first, climbs up on the couch, and drops his chin into his hands for a minute, while he gets over the worst of the shock. Say, at first sight he wa'n't a man you'd think any woman would lose her breath tryin' to catch, less'n she was his landlady, and that was what I figures out that this female peace disturber was.
Monty might have been a winner once, but it was a long spell back. Just then he was some out of repair. He had a head big enough for a college professor, and a crop of hair like an herb doctor, but his eyes were puffy underneath, and you could see by the café au lait tint to his face that his liver'd been on a long strike. He was fairly thick through the middle, but his legs didn't match the rest of him. They were too thin and too short.
"If I'd known you was comin', I'd had the scrub lady dust under there," says I; "but it won't need it now for a couple of weeks."
He makes a stab at sayin' something, but his breath hadn't come back yet. He revives enough though, to take a look at his clothes. Then he works his silk dicer up off'm his ears, and has a peek at that. It was a punky lid, all right, but it had saved a lot of wear on his koko when he made that slide for home plate and struck the wall.