[Illustration: "ALL SUNNED UP LIKE A MAN THAT KNOWS THE WORLD IS HIS OYSTER AND EVERY MONTH'S GOT AN 'R' IN IT"]
Well, about three days before the show I went up to Masonic Hall to see about the stage decorations, and I was waiting while some one went down to the Turf Exchange to get the key off Tim Mahoney, the janitor--Tim had lately had to do janitor work for a B'nai B'rith lodge that was holding meetings there, and it had made him gloomy and dissolute--and, while I was waiting, who should come tripping along but Egbert Floud, all sunned up like a man that knows the world is his oyster and every month's got an "r" in it. Usually he's a kind of sad, meek coot, looking neglected and put upon; but now he was actually giggling to himself as he come up the stairs two at a time.
"Well, Old-Timer, what has took the droop out of your face?" I ask him.
"Why," he says, twinkling all over the place, "I'm aiming to keep it a secret, but I don't mind hinting to an old friend that my part of the evening's entertainment is going to be so good it'll make the whole show top-heavy. Them ladies said they'd rely on me to think up something novel, and I said I would if I could, and I did--that's all. I'd seen enough of these shows where you ladies pike along with pincushions and fancy lemonade and infants' wear--and mebbe a red plush chair, with gold legs, that plays 'Alice, Where Art Thou?' when a person sets down on it--with little girls speaking a few pieces about the flowers and lambs, and so on, and cleaning up about eleven-twenty-nine on the evening's revel--or it would be that, only you find you forgot to pay the Golden Rule Cash Store for the red-and-blue bunting, and they're howling for their money like a wild-cat. Yes, sir; that's been the way of it with woman at the helium. I wouldn't wish to be a Belgian at all under present circumstances; but if I did have to be one I'd hate to think my regular meals was depending on any crooked work you ladies has done up to date."
"You'd cheer me strangely," I says, "only I been a diligent reader of history, and somehow I can't just recall your name being connected up with any cataclysms of finance. I don't remember you ever starting one of these here panics--or stopping one, for that matter. I did hear that you'd had your pocket picked down to the San Francisco Fair."