Side-stepping with Shorty. Ford Sewell

he has one of his bad spells. Fletcher is fifty-six now, you know, and – "

      "Maria!" says Mr. Dawes, his face the colour of a boiled beet, "that's enough of this foolishness! Here, Corson! Show this lady out!"

      "Yes, I was just going, Fletcher," says she.

      "Good-bye, Maria!" sings out Maizie, and then lets out another of her soprano ha-ha's, holdin' her sides like she was tickled to death. Maybe it was funny to her; it wa'n't to Fletcher.

      "Come, McCabe," says he; "we'll get to work."

      Say, I can hold in about so long, and then I've got to blow off or else bust a cylinder head. I'd had about enough of this "Come, McCabe" business, too. "Say, Fletchy," says I, "don't be in any grand rush. I ain't so anxious to take you on as you seem to think."

      "What's that?" he spits out.

      "You keep your ears open long enough and you'll hear it all," says I; for I was gettin' hotter an' hotter under the necktie. "I just want to say that I've worked up a grouch against this job durin' the last few minutes. I guess I'll chuck it up."

      That seemed to go in deep. Mr. Dawes, he brings his eyes together until nothin' but the wrinkle keeps 'em apart, and he gets the hectic flush on his cheek bones. "I don't understand," says he.

      "This is where I quit," says I. "That's all."

      "But," says he, "you must have some reason."

      "Sure," says I; "two of 'em. One's just gone out. That's the other," and I jerks my thumb at Maizie.

      She'd been rollin' her eyes from me to Dawes, and from Dawes back to me. "What does this fellow mean by that?" says Maizie. "Fletcher, why don't you have him thrown out?"

      "Yes, Fletcher," says I, "why don't you? I'd love to be thrown out just now!"

      Someway, Fletcher wasn't anxious, although he had lots of bouncers standin' idle within call. He just stands there and looks at his toes, while Maizie tongue lashes first me and then him. When she gets through I picks up my hat.

      "So long, Fletchy," says I. "What work I put in on you the other day I'm goin' to make you a present of. If I was you, I'd cash that check and buy somethin' that would please Maizie."

      "D'jer annex another five or six hundred up to the Brasstonia this afternoon?" asks Swifty, when I gets back.

      "Nix," says I. "All I done was to organise a wife convention and get myself disliked. That ten-a-minute deal is off. But say, Swifty, just remember I've dodged makin' the bath rubber class, and I'm satisfied at that."

      II

      ROUNDING UP MAGGIE

      Say, who was tellin' you? Ah, g'wan! Them sea shore press agents is full of fried eels. Disguises; nothin'! Them folks I has with me was the real things. The Rev. Doc. Akehead? Not much. That was my little old Bishop. And it wa'n't any slummin' party at all. It was just a little errand of mercy that got switched.

      It was this way: The Bishop, he shows up at the Studio for his reg'lar medicine ball work, that I'm givin' him so's he can keep his equator from gettin' the best of his latitude. That's all on the quiet, though. It's somethin' I ain't puttin' on the bulletin board, or includin' in my list of references, understand?

      Well, we has had our half-hour session and the Bishop has just made a break for the cold shower and the dressin' room, while I'm preparin' to shed my workin' clothes for the afternoon; when in pops Swifty Joe, closin' the gym. door behind him real soft and mysterious.

      "Shorty," says he in that hoarse whisper he gets on when he's excited, "she's – she's come!"

      "Who's come?" says I.

      "S-s-sh!" says he, wavin' his hands. "It's the old girl; and she's got a gun!"

      "Ah, say!" says I. "Come out of the trance. What old girl? And what about the gun?"

      Maybe you've never seen Swifty when he's real stirred up? He wears a corrugated brow, and his lower jaw hangs loose, leavin' the Mammoth Cave wide open, and his eyes bug out like shoe buttons. His thoughts come faster than he can separate himself from the words; so it's hard gettin' at just what he means to say. But, as near as I can come to it, there's a wide female party waitin' out in the front office for me, with blood in her eye and a self cockin' section of the unwritten law in her fist.

      Course, I knows right off there must be some mistake, or else it's a case of dope, and I says so. But Swifty is plumb sure she knew who she was askin' for when she calls for me, and begs me not to go out. He's for ringin' up the police.

      "Ring up nobody!" says I. "S'pose I want this thing gettin' into the papers? If a Lady Bughouse has strayed in here, we got to shoo her out as quiet as possible. She can't shoot if we rush her. Come on!"

      I will say for Swifty Joe that, while he ain't got any too much sense, there's no ochre streak in him. When I pulls open the gym. door and gives the word, we went through neck and neck.

      "Look out!" he yells, and I sees him makin' a grab at the arm of a broad beamed old party, all done up nicely in grey silk and white lace.

      And say, it's lucky I got a good mem'ry for profiles; for if I hadn't seen right away it was Purdy Bligh's Aunt Isabella, and that the gun was nothin' but her silver hearin' tube, we might have been tryin' to explain it to her yet. As it is, I'm just near enough to make a swipe for Swifty's right hand with my left, and I jerks his paw back just as she turns around from lookin' out of the window and gets her lamps on us. Say, we must have looked like a pair of batty ones, standin' there holdin' hands and starin' at her! But it seems that folks as deaf as she is ain't easy surprised. All she does is feel around her for her gold eye glasses with one hand, and fit the silver hearin' machine to her off ear with the other. It's one of these pepper box affairs, and I didn't much wonder that Swifty took it for a gun.

      "Are you Professor McCabe?" says she.

      "Sure!" I hollers; and Swifty, not lookin' for such strenuous conversation, goes up in the air about two feet.

      "I beg pardon," says the old girl; "but will you kindly speak into the audiphone."

      So I steps up closer, forgettin' that I still has the clutch on Swifty, and drags him along.

      "Ahr, chee!" says Swifty. "This ain't no brother act, is it?"

      With that I lets him go, and me and Aunt Isabella gets down to business. I was lookin' for some tale about Purdy – tell you about him some day – but it looks like this was a new deal; for she opens up by askin' if I knew a party by the name of Dennis Whaley.

      "Do I?" says I. "I've known Dennis ever since I can remember knowin' anybody. He's runnin' my place out to Primrose Park now."

      "I thought so," says Aunt Isabella. "Then perhaps you know a niece of his, Margaret Whaley?"

      I didn't; but I'd heard of her. She's Terence Whaley's girl, that come over from Skibbereen four or five years back, after near starvin' to death one wet season when the potato crop was so bad. Well, it seems Maggie has worked a couple of years for Aunt Isabella as kitchen girl. Then she's got ambitious, quit service, and got a flatwork job in a hand laundry – eight per, fourteen hours a day, Saturday sixteen.

      I didn't tumble why all this was worth chinnin' about until Aunt Isabella reminds me that she's president and board of directors of the Lady Pot Wrestlers' Improvement Society. She's one of the kind that spends her time tryin' to organise study classes for hired girls who have different plans for spendin' their Thursday afternoons off.

      Seems that Aunt Isabella has been keepin' special tabs on Maggie, callin' at the laundry to give her good advice, and leavin' her books to read, – which I got a tintype of her readin', not, – and otherwise doin' the upliftin' act accordin' to rule. But along in the early summer Maggie had quit the laundry without consultin' the old girl about it. Aunt Isabella kept on the trail, though, run down her last boardin' place, and begun writin' her what she called helpful letters. She kept this up until she was handed the ungrateful jolt. The last letter come back to her with a few remarks scribbled across the face, indicatin' that readin' such stuff gave Maggie a pain in the small of her back. But the worst of it all was, accordin' to Aunt Isabella, that Maggie was in Coney Island.

      "Think