Your
brains are in your feet, where a dancer's ought to be. You've been
self-taught until you're almost ruined, but not quite. What you need
is a trainer. I'll take you in hand and put you at the top of the
profession. There's room there for the two of us. You may beat me,"
said the Master, casting upon him a cold, savage look combining so much
rivalry, affection, justice, and human hate that it stamped him at once
as one of the little great ones of the earth--"you may beat me; but I
doubt it. I've got the start and the pull. But at the top is where you
belong. Your name, you say, is Robinson?"
"McGowan," repeated the amateur, "Mac McGowan."
"It don't matter," said Delano. "Suppose you walk up to my hotel with
me. I'd like to talk to you. Your footwork is the worst I ever saw,
Madigan--but--well, I'd like to talk to you. You may not think so, but
I'm not so stuck up. I came off of the West Side myself. That overcoat
cost me eight hundred dollars; but the collar ain't so high but what I
can see over it. I taught myself to dance, and I put in most of nine
years at it before I shook a foot in public.
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