So about five-thirty I'm standin' outside the glass doors pushin' the bell. A butler with boiled egg eyes looks me over real frosty from behind the lace curtains; but the minute I says I'm Shorty McCabe he takes off the tramp chain and says, "Yes, sir. This way, sir." I'm towed in over the Persian hall runner to the back parlour, where there's a lady and gent sittin' on opposite sides of the coal grate, with a tea tray between 'em.
"I'll be drinkin' that stuff yet, if I ain't careful," thinks I.
But I didn't even have to duck. The lady was so anxious to get to talkin' that she forgot to shove the cups at me, and the gent didn't act like it was his say. It was hard to tell, the way she has the lights fixed, whether she was twenty-five or fifty. Anyway, she hadn't got past the kittenish stage. Some of 'em never does. She don't overdo the thing, but just gushes natural; usin' her eyes, and eyebrows, and the end of her nose, and the tip of her chin when she spoke, as well as throwin' in a few shoulder lifts once in awhile.
"It's so good of you to come up, professor!" says she. "Isn't it, Pembroke?"
Pembroke—he's the gent on the other side of the tray—starts to say that it was, but she don't give him a chance. She blazes right ahead, tellin' how she's heard of me and my Studio through friends, and the minute she hears of it, she knows that nothing would suit Langdon better. "Langdon's my son, you know," says she.
"Honest?" says I.
"Te-he!" says she. "How sweet of you! Hardly anyone believes it at first, though. But he's a dear boy; isn't he, Pembroke?"
This was Pembroke's cue for fair. It's up to him to do the boost act. But all he produces is a double barrelled blink from behind the glasses. He's one of these chubby chaps, Pembroke is, especially around the belt. He has pink cheeks, and a nice white forehead that almost meets the back of his collar. But he knows when to let things slide with a blink.
"I guess some one's been givin' you the wrong steer," says I. "I ain't started any kindergarten class yet. The Y. M. C. A. does that sort of——"
"Oh, dear! but Langdon isn't a child, you know," says the lady. "He's a great big fellow, almost twenty-two. Yes, really. And I know you'll get to be awfully fond of him. Won't he, Pembroke?"