My act?  Ah, say, most of that good dope is all wasted.  Nobody seems excited over the fact that I’ve arrived, even Brooks Bladen.  As a salesman he ain’t a great success, I judge.  Don’t tout up his stuff any, or try to shove off any seconds or shopworn pieces.  He just tells me to look around, and half apologizes for his line in advance.

Well, for real hand-painted stuff it was kind of tame.  None of this snowy-mountain-peak or mirror-lake business, such as you see in the department stores.  It’s just North River scenes; some clear, some smoky, some lookin’ up, some lookin’ down, and some just across.  In one he’d done a Port Lee ferryboat pretty fair; but there’s another that strikes me harder.  It shows a curve in the drive, with one of them green motor busses goin’ by, the top loaded, and off in the background to one side the Palisades loomin’ up against a fair-weather sunset, while in the middle you can see clear up to Yonkers.  Honest, it’s almost as good as some of them things on the insurance calendars, and I’m standin’ gawpin’ at it when Brooks Bladen and Marjorie drifts along.

“Well?” says he, sort of inquirin’.

“That must be one of the Albany night boats goin’ up,” says I.  “She’ll be turnin’ her lights on pretty quick.  And it’s goin’ to be a corkin’ evenin’ for a river trip.  You can tell that by——­”

But just here Marjorie gives me a jab with her elbow.

“Ow, yes!” says I, rememberin’ my lines.  “Um-m-m-m-m!  Fine feelin’.  Very darin’ too, very!  And when it comes to the tech stuff—­why, it’s there in clusters.  Much obliged—­er—­that is, I guess you can send this one.  Mr. Robert Ellins.  That’s right.  Charge and send.”

Maybe he wasn’t used to makin’ such quick sales; for he stares at me sort of puzzled, and when I turns to Marjorie she’s all pinked up like a strawberry sundae and is smotherin’ a giggle with her mesh purse.  I don’t know why, either.  Strikes me I’d put it over kind of smooth; but as there seems to be a slip somewhere it’s me for the rapid back-away.

“Thanks, that’ll be all to-day,” I goes on, “and—­and I’ll be waitin’ downstairs, Marjorie.”

She don’t stop me; so I pushes through the mob at the tea table, collects my coat and lid, and slips down to the first floor, where I wanders into the drawin’ room.  No arty decorations here.  Instead of pictures and plaster casts, the walls are hung with all kinds of mounted heads and horns, and the floor is covered with odd-lookin’ skin rugs,—­tigers, lions, and such.

I’d been waitin’ there sometime, inspectin’ the still life menagerie, when all of a sudden in from the hall rolls one of these invalid wheeled chairs with a funny little old bald-headed gent manipulatin’ levers.  What hair he has left is real white, and most of his face is covered with a thin growth of close-cropped white whiskers; but under the frosty shrubb’ry, as well as over all the bare space,