"Nope. Nothin' doin'. I'm goin' to be a cow-boy."     

       "Good for you. Well, you tell him when you see him. And now, my lad, out you get, because if I'm interrupted any more I shan't get through to-night."     

       "Sure," said Master Maloney, retiring.     

       "Oh, and Pugsy . . ."     

       "Huh?"     

       "Go out and get a good big basket. I shall want one to carry this animal home in."     

       "Sure," said Master Maloney.     

  

  

       CHAPTER III — AT "THE GARDENIA"     

       "It would ill beseem me, Comrade Jackson," said Psmith, thoughtfully sipping his coffee, "to run down the metropolis of a great and friendly nation, but candour compels me to state that New York is in some respects a singularly blighted town."     

       "What's the matter with it?" asked Mike.     

       "Too decorous, Comrade Jackson. I came over here principally, it is true, to be at your side, should you be in any way persecuted by scoundrels. But at the same time I confess that at the back of my mind there lurked a hope that stirring adventures might come my way. I had heard so much of the place. Report had it that an earnest seeker after amusement might have a tolerably spacious rag in this modern Byzantium. I thought that a few weeks here might restore that keen edge to my nervous system which the languor of the past term had in a measure blunted. I wished my visit to be a tonic rather than a sedative. I anticipated that on my return the cry would go round Cambridge, 'Psmith has been to New York. He is full of oats. For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise. He is hot stuff. Rah!' But what do we find?"     

       He 

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