"Hospital," says I.
He grinned a little, the kind of grin a feller wears when he's bein' helped to his corner, after the count.
"I know," says he; "but when you've been sitting for two weeks on a volcano, Shorty, wondering whether it would blow you up, or open and let you fall in, you're apt to forget your liver."
"It ain't apt to forget you, though," says I. "Shall we have a little session right now?"
And then he springs his proposition. He'd got to go to Washington and back inside of the next two breakfasts, and he wanted me to go along, some on account of his liver, but mostly so's he could forget that he was still on the lid. His private car was hitched to the tail of the Flyer, and he had just forty-five minutes to get aboard. Would I come?
"If I'm wiped out by the time we get back," says he, "I'll make you a preferred creditor."
"I'll take chances on that," says I.
They did do the trick to Pyramid once, you know; but they'd never got him right since. They had him worried some this time, though. You could tell that by the way he smiled at the wrong cues, and combed his deacon whiskers with his fingers. They're the only deacon whiskers I ever had in the Studio. Used to make me nervous when I hit 'em, for fear I'd drive 'em in. But he's dead game, Pyramid is, whether he's stoppin' mitts, or buckin' the Upright Oil push. So I grabs a few things off the wall, and we pikes for the ferry.
"Where's the other parties?" says I, when I'd sized up the inside of the Adeline. There was room enough for a minstrel troupe.
"We're to have it all to ourselves, professor," says he. "And it's almost time for us to pull out; there's the last Cortlandt-st. boat in."