friend? Not her! She calls me impid'nt and says she's got a good mind to box my ears right there. So it was up to me to calm her down.

"All right, Miss Marjorie," says I. "If I've said anything I can't prove, I'll take it back; but if you'll follow me upstairs again for a minute, and wait outside in the hall, I'll have a little talk with the professor that'll settle it one way or the other."

No, she wouldn't do it, and she didn't want me ever to speak to her again. I was too fresh, I was!

"Then I guess I'll have to send Mr. Robert up to engage seats for that Juliet stab of yours," says I, makin' a play to move off.

It was a bluff; but it fetched her. She was willin' to do 'most anything if I wouldn't tell Brother Robert; so back we goes up to the acting school on the top floor. I left her leanin' up against the wall, right near the open transom, and makes a break for McCallum.

He was right there, too. He's one of these short-legged, ham-faced gents that's almost as tall when he's sittin' down as when he's standin' up. A neck that takes a No. 18 turn-down collar goes with that. He has his hands in his64 pockets, an Egyptian joss-stick in his mouth, and he's straddlin' up and down, as satisfied with himself as if he'd just cashed a ticket on the right horse.

64

"Hello, profess!" says I. "I spots your name on the sign; so I takes the foot elevator up to see how you're comin' on."

"Quite right, son," says he, "quite right."

He didn't need any whizz plane then to beat the Curtiss record. He was soarin', soarin,' and too busy with it to take much notice of me.

"You ain't been round to the office lately," says I, lettin' on I was still with the paper.

"No, son," says he; "but you can inform your dramatic man down there that if he wants an important piece of news he'd better come and see me," and with that he taps his chest like he was stunnin' the gallery.

"Thought you looked like happy days, professor," says I. "What's it like? You ain't been takin' on any swell pupils, have you?"

"Haven't I, though?" says he, stickin' his thumbs in his vest pockets and comin' up on his toes as if he was goin' to crow. 

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