"I get you," says I. "And I got to hand it to you, Ernie; you're a cagey old sport, even if you don't look it."
He don't deny. Hadn't I seen him start on his big night? And say, he's gettin' so he can walk past that line of lady typists and give 'em the once over without changin' color in the ears. He's almost skirt broken, Ernie is.
CHAPTER VIII
HOW BABE MISSED HIS STEP
What Babe Cutler was plannin' certainly listened like a swell party—the kind you read about. He was going to round up three other sports like himself, charter a nice comfortable yacht, and spend the winter knockin' about in the West Indies, with a bunch of bananas always hangin' under the deck awning aft and a cabin steward forward mixing planter's punch every time the sun got over the yard arm.
"The lucky stiff!" thinks I, as I heard him runnin' over some of the details to Mr. Robert, who he thinks can maybe be induced to join.
"Oh, come along, Bob!" says he. "We'll stop off for a look at Palm Beach on the way down, hang up a few days at Knight's Key for shark fishing, then run over to Havana for a week of golf, drop around to Santiago and cheer up Billy Pickens out on his blooming sugar plantation, cross over to Jamaica and have some polo with the military bunch up at Newcastle—little things like that. Besides, we can always have a game of deuces wild going evenings and——"
"No use, Babe," breaks in Mr. Robert. "It can't be done. That sort of thing is all well enough for a foot-loose old bach such as you, but with me it's quite different."