She looks at it once, and begins to flop her arms and take on again. "I never can do it, I know I can't!" says she. "I'll fall, I'll fall!"

Well, it was a case of Shorty McCabe to the rescue, after all. "Coming up!" says I, and hops on the thing, holdin' out me paws.

She didn't need any more coaxin'. She scrabbled over that balcony rail and got a shoulder clutch on me that you couldn't have loosened with a crowbar. I gathered in the rest of her with my left hand and steadied myself with the other. Lucky she wasn't a heavy-weight, or that pot-holder wouldn't have stood the strain. It creaked some as we went down, but it held together.

"Street floor, all out!" says I, as I hit the gra.s.s.

But that didn't even get a wiggle out of her.

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

Talk about your cling-stones! She was it. Never a move. I couldn't tell whether she'd fainted, or was too scared to let go. But it was up to me to do something. I couldn't stand there for the rest of the night holdin' a strange lady draped the way she was, and it didn't seem to be just the right thing to sit down to it. Besides, one of her elbows was tryin' to puncture my right lung.

"If you're over the fire panic, I'll try and hoist you back through the window, miss," says I.

She wasn't ready to do any conversin' then, though. She was just holdin'

onto me like I was too good a thing to let slip.

"Well, it looks to me as though we'd got to make a front entrance," says I; "but I hope the audience'll be slim," and with that I starts to finish the lap around the house and make for the double doors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: One of her elbows was tryin' to puncture my right lung.]

I've carried weight before, but never that kind, and it seemed like that blamed house was as big around as a city block. Once or twice we b.u.t.ted into the bushes, and another time I near tumbled the two of us into the pool of a fountain; but after awhile I struck the front porch, some out of breath, and with a few wisps of black hair in my eyes, but still in the game. The lady hadn't made a murmur, and she hadn't slacked her clinch.

I was hopin' to slide in quiet, without bein' spotted by anyone, for most of the women had gone back to bed, and I could hear the men down in the billiard room clickin' gla.s.ses over an extra dream-soother. Luck was against me, though. Right under the newel-post light stood Pinckney, wearin' a silk pajama coat outside of a pair of black broadcloth trousers. When he sees me and what I was luggin' he looks kind of pleased.

"h.e.l.lo, Shorty!" says he. "What have you there?"

"It might be a porous-plaster, by the way it sticks," says I, "but it ain't. It's a lady I've been rescuin' while the rest of you guys was standin' around watchin' a wet cook."

"By Jove!" says Pinckney, steppin' up and takin' a close look. "Miriam!"

"Thanks," says I. "We ain't been introduced yet. Do you mind unhookin'

her fingers from the back of my neck?"

But all he did was to stand there with his mouth corners workin', and them black eyes of his winkin' like a pair of arc lights.

"It's too pretty a picture to spoil," says he. "So touching! Reminds me of Andromeda and What's-his-name. Just keep that pose a minute, will you, until I bring up the rest of the fellows?"

"You'll bring up nothin'," says I, reachin' out with one hand and gettin' a grip on the collar of his silk jacket. "Now get busy, or off comes your kimono."

With that he quits kiddin' and goes to work on Miriam's fingers, and in about a minute she gives a little jump, like she'd just heard the breakfast bell.

"Why!" says she. "Where am I?"

"Right where you landed five minutes ago," says I.

Then she shudders all over and squeals: "Oh! A man! A man!"

"Sure," says I, "you didn't take me for a Morris chair, did you?"

Miriam didn't linger for any more. She lets loose a holler that near splits me ear open, slides down so fast that her bare tootsies. .h.i.t the floor with a spat, grabs her what-d'ye-call-it up away from her ankles with both hands, and sprints down the hall as if she was makin' for the last car.

"Say," says I, gettin' me neck out of crook, "I wish that thought had come to her sooner. I feel as if I'd been squeezed by a pair of ice-tongs. If she can hug like that in her sleep, what could she do when she was wide awake?"

"Shorty," says Pinckney, with his face as solemn as a preacher's, "I'm pained and astonished at this."

"Me, too," says I.

"Don't jest," says he. "This looks to me like an attempt at kidnapping."

"If you'd had that grip on you, I guess you'd have thought it was the real thing," says I. "But here's a little tip I want to pa.s.s on to you: Don't go spreadin' this josh business around the lot, or your show'll be minus a star act. I'll stand for all the private kiddin' you can hand out, but I've got my objections to playin' a public joke-book part. Now, will you quit?"

He was mighty disappointed at havin' to do it, but he gave his word, and I makes tracks up stairs, glad enough to be let off so easy.

"It was a queer kind of a faint, if that's what it was," says I to myself. "I'll bet I fights shy of anything more of the kind that I sees comin' my way. This is what I gets for strayin' so far from Broadway."

But a little thing like that don't interfere with my sleepin', when slumber's on the card, and I proceeds to tear off what was due me on the eight-hour sched., and maybe a little more.

I didn't get a sight of Miriam all day long. Not that I was strainin' my eyes any. There was somethin' better to look at--Sadie, for instance.

'Course Pinckney was bossin' the show, but she was bossin' him, and anyone else that was handy. They were goin' to pull off the racket in the ball-room, and Sadie found a lot to do to it. She's a hummer, Sadie is. Maybe she wa'n't brought up among bow-legged English butlers and a lot of Swedish maids, but she's learned the trick of gettin' 'em to break their necks for her whenever she says the word.

All the forenoon more folks kept comin' on every train, and there was two rows of them big, deep-breathin' tourin' cars in the stables. By dinnertime Rockywold looked like a Saratoga hotel durin' the racin'

season. Chappies were playin' lawn tennis, and luggin' golf bags around, and keepin' the ivories rollin', while the front walks and porches might have been Fifth-ave. on a Monday afternoon, from the dry-goods that was bein' sported there.

I stowed myself away in a corner of the billiard-room and didn't mix much, but I was takin' it all in. Not that I was feelin' lonesome, or anything like that. I likes to see any sort of fun, even if it ain't just my kind. And besides, there was more or less in the bunch that I knew first-rate. But I don't care about pushin' to the front until I gets the call.

So everything runs along smooth, and I was figurin' on makin' a late train down to Primrose Park after I'd done my little turn. I didn't care much about seein' the show, so I stuck to the dressin'-room until they sends word that it was my next. We'd had the punchin'-bag apparatus rigged up in the forenoon, and there wasn't anything left to be done but hook on the leather and spread out the mat.

Pinckney was doin' the announcin' and the jolly he gives me before he lugs me out was somethin' fierce. I reckon I was blushin' some when I went on. I took just one squint at the mob and felt a chill down my spine. Say, it's one thing to step up before a gang of sports in a hall, and another to prance out in ring clothes on a platform in front of two or three hundred real ladies and gents wearin' their evenin' togs.

There I was, though, and the crowd doin' the hurrah act for all it was worth. When I gets the bag goin' I feels better, and whatever grouch I has against Pinckney for not lettin' me wear my gym. suit I puts into short-arm punches on the pigskin. The stunt seemed to take. I could tell that by the buzz that came over the footlights. No matter what you're doin', whether it's makin' campaign speeches, or stoppin' a comer in six rounds, it's always a help to know that you've got the crowd with you.

By the time I'd got well warmed up, and was throwin' in all the flourishes that's been invented--double ducks, side-step and swing, shoulder work, and so on--I felt real chipper. I makes a grandstand finish, and then has the nerve to face the audience and do a matinee bend. As I did that I gets my lamps fixed on some one in the front row.

Say, if you've ever done much on the platform, you know how sometimes you'll get a squint at a pair of eyes down front and can't get yourself away from 'em after that. Well, that was the way with me then. There was rows and rows of faces that all looked alike, but this one phiz seemed to stand right out; and to save me, all I could do was to stare back.

It belonged to Miriam. She had her chin tucked down, and her head canted to one side, and her mouth puckered into the mushiest kind of a grin you ever saw. Her eyes were rolled up real kittenish, too. Oh, it was a combination to make a man strike his grandmother, that look she was sendin' up to me. I wanted to dodge it and pick up another, but there was no more gettin' away from it than as if I was bein' followed by a search-light. Worst of it was, I could feel myself grinnin' back at her just as mushy. I was gettin' sillier every breath, and I might have got as far as blowin' kisses at her if I hadn't pulled myself together and begun to juggle the Indian clubs, for the second half of my act.

All the ginger had faded out of me, though, and I cut the rest of it mighty short. As I comes off, Sadie grabs me and begins to tell me what a hit I'd made, and how tickled she was, but I shakes her off.

"What's your great rush, Shorty?" says she.

"I've got a date to fill down the road," says I, and I makes a quick break for the dressin'-room. Honest, I was gettin' rattled for fear if Miriam should get another look at me she'd mesmerize me so I'd never wake up. I skins into my sack-suit, leaves word to have my bag expressed to town, and was just about to make a sudden exit when I b.u.mps into some one at the front door.

"Oh, Mr. McCabe! How did you know where to find me?" says she.

Say, I'll give you one guess. Sure, it was Miriam again. She was got up expensive, all real lace and first-water sparks, and just as handsome as a towel rack. But the minute she turns on that gushy look I'm nailed to the spot, same as the rabbits they feed to the boa-constrictors up at the Zoo.