"My dear girl," says Mrs. Twombley-Crane, "there's nothing wrong with you at all. You're simply delicious. Isn't she, now, Freddie?"
And Freddie just grinned. Say, some men is born wise. "Professor McCabe and I are exchanging views on the coming light-weight contest," says he. "Don't mind us, my dear."
Perhaps that's what we were gassin' about, or why is a hen. You can search me. I was that rattled with Sadie's nerve display that I didn't follow anything else real close.
But when it was all over, and I'd been brought to by a peep at the bill the waiter handed me, I couldn't figure out whether she'd made a bull's-eye or rung in a false alarm.
One thing I did notice, as we sails out, and that was the stout Pettigrew person who'd passed Sadie the pickled pig's foot on the avenue that afternoon. She was sitting opposite a skimpy little runt with a bald head, at a table up near the door where the waiters juggled soup over her feathers every time they passed. Her eyes were glued on Sadie as we came up, and by the spread of the furrows around her mouth I see she was tryin' to crack a smile.
"Now," thinks I, "here's where she collects chilblains and feels the mercury drop."
But say! would you look for it in a dream book? What does Sadie do but pass her out the glad hand and coo away, like a pouter pigeon on a cornice, about being tickled to see her again. Oh, they get me dizzy, women do!
That wa'n't a marker though, to the reverse English carom Sadie takes after we'd got into a cab and started for her hotel. Was there a jolly for me, or a "Thank you, Shorty, I've had the time of my life?" Nothin' like it. She just slumped into her corner and switched on the boo-hoos like a girl that's been kept after school.
"Enjoy yourself, Sadie," says I. "Only remember that this is a hansom, not a street sprinkler."
That didn't fetch her; so after a while I tries her again. "What went wrong?" says I. "Was she stringin' you, or was it the way I wore my face that queered the show?"