"Where do you kids belong?" he sings out.

With that there comes a howl, and the whole bunch yells:

Hot pertater--cold termater--alligater--Rome!

We're the girls from the Incubator Home!

"Caught with the goods!" says he, turnin' to the Cap'n and me. "You're arrested for wholesale kidnappin'. There's a general alarm out for youse."

"Ah, back to the goats!" says I. "You don't think we look nutty enough to steal a whole orphan asylum, do you, Rounds?"

"I wouldn't trust either of you alone with a brick block," says he. "And your side partner with the Salvation Army coat on looks like a yegg man to me."

"Now will you be nice, Cap?" says I.

At this Sadie and Mrs. Cubbs tries to b.u.t.t in, but that roundsman had a head like a choppin' block. He said the two nurses had come to town and reported that they'd been held up in the woods and that all the kids had been swiped. As Woodie fitted one of the descriptions, we had to go to the station, that was all there was about it.

And say, if the Sarge hadn't happened to have been one of my old backers, we'd have put in the night with the drunk and disorderlies.

Course, when I tells me little tale, the Sarge give me the ha-ha and scratches our names off the book. We didn't lose any time either, in hittin' the Studio, where there was a hot bath and dry towels.

But paste this in your Panama: Next time me and Woodie goes out to rescue the fatherless, we takes along our raincoats. We've shook hands on that.

CHAPTER XIII

How's Woodie and Sadie comin' on? Ah, say! you don't want to take the things she does too serious. It's got to be a real live one that interests Sadie. And, anyway, Woodie's willing to take oath that she put up a job on him. So it's all off.

And I guess I ain't so popular with her as I might be. Anyway, I wouldn't blame her, after the exhibition I made the other night, for cla.s.sin' me with the phonies. It was trouble I hunted up all by myself.

Say, if I hadn't been havin' a dopey streak I'd a known something was about due. There hadn't a thing happened to me for more'n a week, when Pinckney blows into the Studio one mornin', just casual like, as if he'd only come in 'cause he found the door open. That should have put me leary, but it didn't. I gives him the hail, and tells him, he's lookin'

like a pink just off the ice.

"Shorty," says he, "how are you on charity?"

"I'm a cinch," says I. "Every panhandler north of Madison Square knows he can work me for a beer check any time he can run me down."

"Then you'll be glad to exercise your talents in aid of a worthy cause,"

says he.

"It don't follow," says I. "The deservin' poor I pa.s.ses up. There's too much done for 'em, as it is. It's the unworthy kind that wins my coin.

They enjoys it more and has a harder time gettin' it."

"Your logic is good, Shorty," says he, "and I think I agree with your sentiments. But this is a case where charity is only an excuse. The ladies out at Rockywold are getting up an affair for the benefit of something or other, no one seems to know just what, and they've put you down for a little bag punching and club swinging."

"Then wire 'em to scratch the entry," says I. "I don't make any orchestra circle plays that I can dodge, and when it comes to fightin'

the leather before a bunch of peac.o.c.k millinery I renigs every time.

I'll put on Swifty Joe as a sub., if you've got to have some one."

Pinckney shook his head at that. "No," says he, "I'll tell Sadie she must leave you off the program."

"Hold on," says I. "Was it Sadie billed me for this stunt?"

He said it was.

"Then I'm on the job," says I. "Oh, you can grin your ears off, I don't care."

Well, that was what fetched me out to Rockywold on a Friday night, when I had a right to be watchin' the amateur try-outs at the Maryborough Club instead. The show wasn't until Sat.u.r.day evenin', but Pinckney said I ought to be there for the dress rehearsal.

"There's only about a dozen guests there now, so you needn't get skittish," says he.

And a dozen don't go far towards fillin' up a place like Rockywold. Say, if I had the price, I'd like a shack where I could take care of more or less comp'ny without settin' up cot beds, but I'll be blistered if I can see the fun in runnin' a free hotel like that.

These amateur shows are apt to be pretty punk, but I could see that, barrin' myself, there was a fair aggregation of talent on hand. The star was a googoo-eyed girl who did a barefoot specialty, recitin' pomes to music, and accompanyin' herself with a kind of parlor hoochee-coochee that would have drawn capacity houses at Dreamland. Then there was a pretty boy who could do things to the piano, a funeral-faced duck that could tell funny stories, and a bunch of six or eight likely-lookin'

ladies and gents who'd laid themselves out to prance through what they called a minuet. Lastly there was me an' Miriam.

She was one of these limp, shingle-chested girls, Miriam was. She didn't have much to say, so I didn't take any particular notice of her. But at the rehearsal I got next to the fact that she could tease music out of a violin in great style. It was all right if you shut your eyes, for Miriam wasn't what you'd call a pastel. She was built a good deal on the lines of an L-road pillar, but that didn't bar her from wearin' one of these short-sleeved square-necked, girly-girly dresses that didn't leave you much in doubt as to her framework.

Yes, Miriam could have stood a few well-placed pads. She'd lived long enough to have found that out, too, but they was missin'. I should guess that Miriam had begun exhibitin' her collar-bones to society about the time poor old John L. fought the battle of New Orleans. Yet when she snuggled the b.u.t.t end of that violin down under her chin and squinted at you across the bridge, she had all the motions of a high-school girl.

'Course, I didn't dope all this out to myself at the time; for, as I was sayin', I didn't size her up special. But it all came to me afterwards--yes, yes!

The excitement broke loose along about the middle of that first night.

I'd turned in about an hour before, and I was poundin' my ear like a circus hand on a Sunday lay-over, when I hears the trouble cry. First off I wasn't goin' to do any more than turn over and get a fresh hold on the mattress, for I ain't much on routin' out for fires unless I feel the head-board gettin' hot. But then I wakes up enough to remember that Rockywold is a long ways outside the metropolitan fire district, and I begins to throw clothes onto myself.

Inside of two minutes I was outdoors lookin' for a chance to win a Carnegie medal. There wasn't any show at all, though. The fire, what there was of it, was in the kitchen, in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the wing where the help stays. Half a dozen stablemen had put it out with the garden hose, and were finishin' the job by soakin' one of the cooks, when I showed up.

I watched 'em for a while, and then started back to my room. Somehow I got twisted up in the shrubbery, and instead of goin' back the way I came, I gets around on the other corner. Just about then a ground-floor window is shoved up, and a female in white floats out on a little stone balcony. She waves her arms and begins to call for help.

"You're late," says I. "It's all over."

That didn't satisfy her at all, though. Some smoke and steam was still comin' from the far side of the buildin', and it was blowin' in through another window.

"Help, help!" she squeals. "Help, before I jump!"

"I wouldn't," says I, "they've gone home with the life net."

"The smoke, the smoke!" says she. "Oh, I must jump!"

"Well, if you've got the jumpin' fit," says I, "jump ahead; but if you can hold yourself in a minute, I'll bring a step-ladder."

"Then hurry, please hurry!" says she, and starts to climb up on the edge of the balcony.

It wa'n't more'n six feet to the turf anyway, and it wouldn't have been any killing matter if she had jumped, less'n she'd landed on her neck; but she was as looney as if she'd been standin' on top of the Flatiron Buildin'. Bein' as how I'd forgot to bring a step-ladder with me, I chases around after something she could come down on. The moon wasn't shinin' very bright though, and there didn't seem to be any boxes or barrels lyin' around loose, so I wasn't makin' much headway. But after awhile I gets hold of something that was the very ticket. It was one of these wooden stands for flower-pots. I lugs that over and sets it up under the window.

"Now if you'll just slide down onto that easy," says I, "your life is saved."