On the level, now, it went like that. Maybe I've left out some of the frills, but that was the groundwork of his remarks.
"Yes," says I, "you're a regular come-on. I guess the adorable Sadie has handed you a josh. She's equal to it."
But that got by him. He just stood there, teeterin' up and down on his patent leathers, and grinnin' like a monkey.
"I say," says I, "she's run you on a sidin', dropped you down a coal-hole. Do you get wise?"
Did he? Not so you would notice it. He goes on grinnin' and teeterin', like he was on exhibition in a museum and I was the audience. Then he gets a view of himself in the glass over the safe there, and begins to pat down his astrakhan thatch, and punch up his puff tie, and dust off his collar. Ever see one of these peroxide cloak models doin' a march past the show windows on her day off? Well, the Baron had all those motions and a few of his own. He was ornamental, all right, and it wa'n't any news to him either.
About then, though, I begins to wonder if I hadn't been a little too sure about Sadie. There's no tellin', when it comes to women, you know; and when it hit me that perhaps, after all, she'd made up her mind to tag this one from Austria, you could have fried an egg on me anywhere.
"Look here, Patchouli," says I. "Is this straight about you and Sadie? Are you the winner?"
"Ah, the adorable Sadie!" says he, comin' back to earth and slappin' his solar plexus with one hand.
"We've covered that ground," says I. "What I want to know is, does she cotton to you?"
"Cot-ton? Cot-ton?" says he, humpin' his eyebrows like a French ballad singer.