Side-stepping with Shorty Part 7

"I guess me and Dominick's old crow bait has about the same thoughts along that line," says I. "Can you blame us?"

"It is rather giddy, isn't it?" says she.

"'Most gave me the blind staggers," says I. "You ought to distribute smoked gla.s.ses along the route of procession. Did you buy it some dark night, or was it made to order after somethin' you saw in a dream?"

"The idea!" says Sadie. "This jaunting car is one I had sent over from Paris, to help my ponies get a blue ribbon at the Hill'n'dale horse show. And that's what it did, too."

"Blue ribbon!" says I. "The judges must have been colour blind."

"Oh, I don't know," says Sadie, stickin' her tongue out at me. "After that I've a good notion to make you walk."

"I don't know as I'd have nerve enough to ride in that, anyway," says I. "Is it a funeral you're goin' to?"

"Next thing to it," says she. "But come on, Shorty; get aboard and I'll tell you all about it."

So I steps up alongside the spotted silk, and the driver lets the ponies loose. Say, it was like ridin' sideways in a roller coaster.

Sadie said she was awful glad to see me just then. She had a job on hand that she hated to do, and she needed some one to stand in her corner and cheer her up while she tackled it. Seems she'd got rash a few days before and made a promise to lug the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Kildee over to call on the Wigghorns. Sadie'd been actin' as sort of advance agent for Their Dukelets durin' their splurge over here, and Mrs. Wigghorn had mesmerised her into makin' a date for a call. This was the day.

It would have gone through all right if some one hadn't put the Duke wise to what he was up against. Maybe you know about the Wigghorns?

Course, they've got the goods, for about a dozen years ago old Wigghorn choked a car patent out of some poor inventor, and his bank account's been pyramidin' so fast ever since that now he's in the eight figure cla.s.s; but when it comes to bein' in the monkey dinner crowd, they ain't even counted as near-silks.

"Why," says Sadie, "I've heard that they have their champagne standing in rows on the sideboard, and that they serve charlotte russe for breakfast!"

"That's an awful thing to repeat," says I.

"Oh, well," says she, "Mrs. Wigghorn's a good natured soul, and I do think the Duke might have stood her for an afternoon. He wouldn't though, and now I've got to go there and call it off, just as she's got herself into her diamond stomacher, probably, to receive them."

"You couldn't ring in a couple of subs?" says I. For a minute Sadie's blue eyes lights up like I'd pa.s.sed her a plate of peach ice cream.

"If I only could!" says she. Then she shakes her head. "No," she says, "I should hate to lie. And, anyway, there's no one within reach who could play their parts."

"That bein' the case," says I, "it looks like you'd have to go ahead and break the sad news. What do you want me to do--hold a bucket for the tears?"

Sadie said all she expected of me was to help her forget it afterwards; so we rolls along towards Wigghorn Arms. We'd got within a mile of there when we meets a Greek peddler with a bunch of toy balloons on his shoulder, and in less'n no time at all them crazy-quilt ponies was tryin' to do back somersaults and other fool stunts. In the mix up one of 'em rips a shoe almost off, and Mr. Coachman says he'll have to chase back to a blacksmith shop and have it glued on.

"Oh, bother!" says Sadie. "Well, hurry up about it. We'll walk along as far as Apawattuck Inn and wait there."

It wa'n't much of a walk. The Apawattuck's a place where they deal out imitation sh.o.r.e dinners to trolley excursionists, and fusel oil high b.a.l.l.s to the bubble trade. The name sounds well enough, but that ain't satisfyin' when you're real hungry. We were only killin' time, though, so it didn't matter. We strolled up just as fearless as though their clam chowders was fit to eat.

And that's what fetched us up against the Tortonis. They was well placed, at a corner veranda table where no one could miss seein' 'em; and, as they'd just finished a plate of chicken salad and a pint of genuine San Jose claret, they was lookin' real comfortable and elegant.

Say, to see the droop eyed way they sized us up as we makes our entry, you'd think they was so tired doin' that sort of thing that life was hardly worth while. You'd never guess they'd been livin' in a hall bed room on crackers and bologna ever since the season closed, and that this was their first real feed of the summer, on the strength of just havin' been booked for fifty performances. He was wearin' one of them torrid suits you see in Max Blumstein's show window, with a rainbow band on his straw pancake, and one of these flannel collar s.h.i.+rts that you b.u.t.ton under the chin with a bra.s.s safety pin. She was sportin' a Peter Pan peekaboo that would have made Comstock gasp. And neither of 'em had seen a pay day for the last two months.

But it was done good, though. They had the tray jugglers standin'

around respectful, and the other guests wonderin' how two such real House of Mirthers should happen to stray in where the best dishes on the card wa'n't more'n sixty cents a double portion.

Course, I ain't never been real chummy with Tortoni--his boardin' house name's Skinny Welch, you know--but I've seen him knockin' around the Rialto off'n on for years; so, as I goes by to the next table, I lifts my lid and says, "h.e.l.lo, Skin. How goes it?" Say, wa'n't that friendly enough? But what kind of a come back do I get? He just humps his eyebrows, as much as to say, "How bold some of these common folks is gettin' to be!" and then turns the other way. Sadie and I look at each other and swap grins.

"What happened?" says she.

"I had a fifteen cent lump of Hygeia pa.s.sed to me," says I. "And with the ice trust still on top, I calls it extravagant."

"Who are the personages?" says she.

"Well, the last reports I had of 'em," says I, "they were the Tortonis, waitin' to do a parlour sketch on the bargain day matinee circuit; but from the looks now I guesses they're travellin' incog--for the afternoon, anyway."

"How lovely!" says Sadie.

Our seltzer lemonades come along just then, so there was business with the straws. I'd just fished out the last piece of pineapple when Jeems shows up on the drive with the spotted ponies and that side saddle cart. I gave Sadie the nudge to look at the Tortonis. They had their eyes glued to that outfit, like a couple of Hester-st. kids lookin' at a hoky poky waggon.

And it wa'n't no common "Oh, I wish I could swipe that" look, either.

It was a heap deeper'n that. The whole get up, from the red wheels to the silver rosettes, must have hit 'em hard, for they held their breath most a minute, and never moved. The girl was the first to break away.

She turns her face out towards the Sound and sighs. Say, it must be tough to have ambitions like that, and never get nearer to 'em than now and then a ten block hansom ride.

About then Jeems catches Sadie's eye, and salutes with the whip.

"Did you get it fixed?" says she.

He says it's all done like new.

Signor Tortoni hadn't been losin' a look nor a word, and the minute he ties us up to them speckled ponies he maps out a change of act. Before I could call the waiter and get my change, Tortoni was right on the ground.

"I beg pardon," says he, "but isn't this my old friend, Professor McCabe?"

"You've sure got a comin' memory, Skinny," says I.

"Why!" says he, gettin' a grip on my paw, "how stupid of me! Really, professor, you've grown so distinguished looking that I didn't place you at all. Why, this is a great pleasure, a very great pleasure, indeed!"

"Ye-e-es?" says I.

But say, I couldn't rub it in. He was so dead anxious to connect himself with that red cart before the crowd that I just let him spiel away. Inside of two minutes the honours had been done all around, and Sadie was bein' as nice to the girl as she knew how. And Sadie knows, though! She'd heard that sigh, Sadie had; and it didn't jar me a bit when she gives them the invite to take a little drive down the road with us.

Well, it was worth the money, just to watch Skinny judgin' up the house out of the corner of his eye. I'll bet there wa'n't one in the audience that he didn't know just how much of it they was takin' in; and by the easy way he leaned across the seat back and chinned to Sadie, as we got started, you'd thought he'd been brought up in one of them carts. The madam wa'n't any in the rear, either. She was just as much to home as if she'd been usin' up a green transfer across 34th.

If the style was new to her, or the motion gave her a tingly feelin'

down her back, she never mentioned it.

They did lose their breath a few, though, when we struck Wigghorn Arms.

It's a whackin' big place, all fenced in with fancy iron work and curlicue gates fourteen feet high.

"I've just got to run in a minute and say a word to Mrs. Wigghorn,"

says Sadie. "I hope you don't mind waiting?"

Oh no, they didn't. They said so in chorus, and as we looped the loop through the shrubbery and began to get glimpses of window awnings and tiled roof, I could tell by the way they acted that they'd just as soon wait inside as not.

Mrs. Wigghorn wasn't takin' any chances on havin' Their Dukelets drive up, leave their cards, and skidoo. She was right out front holdin'

down a big porch rocker, with her eyes peeled up the drive. And she was costumed for the part. I don't know just what it was she had on, but I've seen plush parlour suits covered with stuff like that. She's a sizable old girl anyway, but in that rig, and with her store hair puffed out, she loomed up like a bale of hay in a door.

"Why, how do you do!" she squeals, makin' a swoop at Sadie as soon as the wheels stopped turnin'. "And you did bring them along, didn't you?

Now don't say a word until I get Peter--he's just gone in to brush the cigar ashes off his vest. We want to be presented to the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess together, you know. Peter! Pe-ter!" she shouts, and in through the front door she waddles, yellin' for the old man.