So we made a date, and Sadie drops me at the Studio. I goes right to the 'phone and calls up Pinckney at the club. Didn't I tell you about him? Sure, that's the one. You wouldn't think though, to see him and me tappin' each other with the mitts, that he was a front ranker in the smart push. But he's all of that. He's a pacemaker for the swiftest bunch in the world. Say, if he should take to walkin' on his hands, there wouldn't be no men's shoes sold on Fifth-ave. for a year.
Well, he shows up here about an hour later, lookin' as fresh as though he'd just come off the farm. "Did you say something about wanting advice, Shorty?" says he.
"I did," says I.
"Religious, or otherwise?" says he. "But it makes no difference; I'm yours to command."
"I don't ask you to go beyond your depth," says I. "It's just a case of orderin' fancy grub. I'm due to blow a lady friend of mine to the swellest kind of a supper that grows in the borough; no two-dollar tabble-doty, understand; but a special, real-lace, eighteen-carat feed, with nothing on the bill of fare that ain't spelled in French."
"Ah!" says he, "something like Barquettes Bordellaise, poulet en casserole, fraises au champagne, and so on, eh?"
"I was about to mention them very things," says I. "But my memory's on the blink. Couldn't you write 'em down, with a diagram of how they look, and whether you spear 'em with a fork, or take 'em in through a straw?"
"Why, to be sure," says he. So he did, and it looked something like this:
"Consomme au fumet d'estaragon (chicken soup—big spoon).
"Barquettes Bordellaise (marrow on toast, with mushrooms—fork only).