“Why, yes,” says he.  And then, glancin’ around cautious, he leans across the table and asks mysterious, “Say, where’s Maizie Latour actin’?”

Honest, it comes out so unexpected he had me gaspin’.  “Oh, you Boothbay ringer!” says I.  “Maizie, eh?  Now, who would have thought it?  And you only landed this mornin’!  Maizie—­er—­what was that again?”

“Latour,” says he, flushin’ up some and tryin’ not to notice my josh.

“It’s by me,” says I.  “Sounds like musical comedy, though.  Is she a showgirl, or one of the chicken ballet?”

Ira shakes his head puzzled.  “All I know,” says he, “is that she’s actin’ somewhere in New York, and—­and I’d like to find out where.  I—­I got to!” he adds emphatic.

“Then you ought to have said that before,” says I, “and Mr. Robert would have put one of his chappy friends on the job.  Sorry, but when it comes to chorus girls, I ain’t——­”

“Hold on!” he breaks in.  “You’re sort of jumpin’ at things, Son.  The fact is I—­well, I guess I might’s well tell you as anyone.  I—­I got to tell someone.”

“Help!” thinks I.  “The dam’s goin’ to give way.”

“You see,” he goes on, “it’s like this:  Nellie’s an old friend of mine, and——­”

“Nellie!” says I.  “You just said Maizie.”

“That’s what I hear she goes by on the stage,” says he.  “She was Nellie Mason up to the Harbor.”

“You don’t mean it?” says I.  “What was she doin’ there?”

“She was table girl at the Mansion House,” says he.

“Which?” says I.  “Oh, dish juggler, eh?  And now she’s on the stage?  Some jump for Nellie!  But, honest now, Higgins, you don’t mean to spring one of them mossy ’Way Down East drammers on me as the true dope?  Come now, don’t tell me you and she used to go to school together, and all that!”

No, it wa’n’t quite on that line.  She was only one of Boothbay’s fairest daughters by adoption, havin’ drifted in from some mill town—­Biddeford, I think it was—­where a weaver’s strike had thrown her out of a job.  She was half Irish and half French-Canadian, and, accordin’ to Ira’s description, she was some ornamental.

Anyway, she had the boys all goin’ in no time at all.  Ira was mealin’ at the Mansion House just then, though; so he was in on the ground floor from the start.  Even at that, how he managed to keep the rail with so much competition is more’n I can say; but there’s something sort of clean and wholesome lookin’ about him, and I expect them calm, sea-blue eyes helped along.  Anyway, him and Nellie kept comp’ny there, I take it, for three or four months quite steady, and Ira admits that he was plumb gone on her.

“Well, what was the hitch?” says I.  “Wouldn’t she be Mrs. Higgins?”

“Guess she would if I had asked her,” says he; “but I didn’t get around to it quick enough.  Fact is, I’d just bought out the boat shop, and I had fifteen or twenty men to work for me, with four new keels laid down at once, and—­well, I was mighty rushed with work just then and——­”