"It's all right, Shorty," says she between weeps. "And nothing's wrong, nothing at all. Mrs. What's-Her-Name's asked me to stay a week with her at their Newport place, and old Mrs. Pettigrew will turn green before morning thinking of me, and I've shaken the hoodoo at last. But it all came so much in a lump that I just had to turn on the sprayer. You know how I feel, don't you, Shorty?"
"Sure," says I, "just as well as if you'd sent me a picture postal of the place you boarded last."
But say, I turned the trick, didn't I? I didn't know what was comin' out of the box, of course; and maybe I was some jolted at throwin' three sixes to a pair, but there they lay.
No, I ain't goin' into the boostin' line as a reg'lar thing; but I guess if any amateur in the business gets a rose nailed on him, I ought to be the gent. Not?
CHAPTER VIII
Did you shut the hall door? That's right. There's no tellin' what's liable to float in here any time. Say, if they don't quit it, I'll get to be one of these nervous prostraters, that think themselves sick abed without half tryin'. Sure, I'm just convalescin' from the last shock.
How? Now make a guess. Well, it was this way: I was sittin' right here in the front office, readin' the sportin' dope and takin' me reg'lar mornin' sunbath, when the door-buzzer goes off, and in drifts about a hundred and ninety pounds of surprise package.
There was a foreign label on it, all right; but I didn't know until later that it read "Made in Austria." He was a beefy sort of gent, with not much neck to speak of, and enough curly black hair to shingle a French poodle. He was well colored, too. Beats the cars, don't it, the good health that's wasted on some of these foreigners?