He kind of looked me over steady like, and then he passes out a card which says as how he was Lionel Pinckney Ogden Bruce.
"Do I have my choice?" says I. "Cause if I do I nips onto Pinckney—it's cute. Well, Pinckney, what's doing?"
He drapes himself on a chair, gets his little silver-headed stick balanced just so between his knees, pulls his trousers up to high-water mark, and takes an inventory of me from the mat up. And say! when he got through I felt as though he knew it all, from how much I'd weigh in at to where I had my laundry done. Yes, Pinckney had a full set of eyes. They were black; not just ordinary black, same's a hole in a hat, but shiny an' sparklin', like patent leathers in the sun. If it hadn't been for them eyes you might have thought he was one of the eight-day kind that was just about to run down. I ought to have got next to Pinckney's model, just by his lamps; but I didn't. I'm learnin', though, and if I last long enough I'll be a wise guy some day.
Well, when Pinckney finishes his census of me he says: "Professor, I wish to take a private course, or whatever you call it. I would like to engage your exclusive services for about three weeks."
"Chic, chic!" says I. "Things like that come high, young man."
Pinckney digs up a sweet little check-book, unlimbers a fountain-pen, and asks: "How much, please?"
"Seein' as this is the slack season with me, I'll make it fifty per," says I.
"Hour or day?" says he.
Maybe I was breathin' a bit hard, but I says careless like: "Oh, call it fifty a day and expenses."
Business with the pen. "That's for the first week," says Pinckney, and I see he'd reckoned in Sunday and all.