The big town - Lady Perkins - (2)

“She’s been eying me all week,” I said. “I guess she didn’t have the nerve to break the ice up to this morning; then she got desperate.”
    “She must of,” said Ella.
    “I wished,” said Kate, “that when you introduce me to people you’d give them my name.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I couldn’t recall it for a minute, though your face is familiar.”
    “But listen,” says the wife. “What ails your dogs is a corn. You haven’t got no swelled feet and you haven’t got no medicine for them.”
    “Well,” I says, “what I give her won’t hurt her. It’s just a bottle of soap and water that I mixed up, and pretty near everybody uses that once in a wile without no bad after effects.”
    Now, the whole three of us had been eating pretty good ever since we’d came to the Decker. After living à la carte at Big Town prices for six months, the American plan was sweet patootie. But this night the gals not only skrimped themselves but they was in such a hurry for me to get through that my molars didn’t hardly have time to identify what all was scampering past them. Ella finally got so nervous that I had to take off the feed bag without dipping my bill into the stewed rhubarb.
    “Lady Perkins will get tired waiting for you,” she says. “And besides, she won’t want us horning in there and interrupting them after their game’s started.”
    “Us!” said I. “How many do you think it’s going to take to carry this bottle?”
    “You don’t mean to say we can’t go with you!” said Kate.
    “You certainly can’t,” I says. “I and the nobility won’t have our little romance knocked for a gool by a couple of country gals that can’t get on speaking terms with nobody but the chambermaid.”
    “But they’ll be other people there,” says Kate. “She can’t play cards alone.”
    “Who told you she was going to play cards?” I says. “She picked the red card room because we ain’t liable to be interrupted there. As for playing cards alone, what else have I done all week? But when I get there she won’t have to play solitary. It’ll be two-handed hearts; where if you was to crowd in, it couldn’t be nothing but rummy.”
    Well, they finally dragged me from the table, and the gals took a seat in the lobby wile I went upstairs after the medicine. But I hadn’t no sooner than got a hold of the bottle when Ella come in the room.
    “Listen,” she says. “They’s a catch in this somewheres. You needn’t to try and tell me that a woman like Lady Perkins is trying to start a flirtation with a yahoo. Let’s hear what really come off.”
    “I already told you,” I said. “The woman’s nuts over me and you should ought to be the last one to find fault with her judgment.”
    Ella didn’t speak for a wile. Then she says: “Well, if you’re going to forget your marriage vows and flirt with an old hag like she, I guess two can play at that little game. They’s several men round this hotel that I like their looks and all as they need is a little encouragement.”
    “More than a little, I guess,” says I, “or else they’d of already been satisfied with what you and Kate has give them. They can’t neither one of you pretend that you been fighting on the defense all week, and the reason you haven’t copped nobody is because this place is a hotel, not a home for the blind.”
    I wrapped a piece of newspaper round the bottle and started for the door. But all of a sudden I heard snuffles and stopped.
    “Look here,” I said. “I been kidding you. They’s no need for you to get sore and turn on the tear ducks. I’ll tell you how this thing happened if you think you can see a joke.”
    So I give her the truth, and afterwards I says: “They’ll be plenty of time for you and Kate to get acquainted with the dame, but I don’t want you tagging in there with me to-night. She’d think we was too cordial. To-morrow morning, if you can manage to get up, we’ll all three of us go out on the porch and lay for her when she brings the whelps back from their hike. She’s sure to stop and inquire about my kennel. And don’t forget, wile she’s talking, that we got a couple of yaphounds that’s suffering from blanny, and if she asks any questions let me do the answering, as I can think a lot quicker. You better tell Kate the secret, too, before she messes everything up, according to custom.”
    Then I and the Mrs. come downstairs and her and Katie went out to listen to the music wile I beat it to the red card room. I give Perkie the bottle of rash poison and she thanked me and said she would have the dogs’ governess slap some of it onto them in the morning. She was playing bridge w’ist with another gal and two dudes. To look at their faces they wasn’t playing for just pins. I had sense enough to not talk, but I stood there watching them a few minutes. Between hands Perk introduced me to the rest of the party. She had to ask my name first. The other skirt at the table was a Mrs. Snell and one of the dudes was a Doctor Platt. I didn’t get the name of Lady Perkins’ partner.
    “Mr. Finch,” says Perk, “is also a dog fancier. But his dogs is sick with a disease called blanny and he’s got them over to the dog hospital at Haverton.”
    “What kind of dogs?” asked Platt.
    “I never heard of the breed before,” says Perk. “They’re yaphounds.”
    “They raise them in South Dakota,” I says.
    Platt gives me a funny look and said: “I been in South Dakota several times and I never heard of a yaphound neither; or I never heard of a disease named blanny.”
    “I s’pose not,” says I. “You ain’t the only old-fashioned doctor that left themself go to seed when they got out of school. I bet you won’t admit they’s such a thing as appendicitis.”
    Well, this got a laugh from Lady Perkins and the other dude, but it didn’t go very big with Doc or Mrs. Snell. Wile Doc was trying to figure out a come-back I said I must go and look after my womenfolks. So I told the party I was glad to of met them and walked out.
    I found Ella and Katie in the summer parlor, and they wasn’t alone. A nice-looking young fella named Codd was setting alongside of them, and after we was introduced Ella leaned over and w’ispered to me that he was Bob Codd, the famous aviator. It come out that he had invented some new kind of an aeroplane and had came to demonstrate it to the Williams Company. The company--Palmer Williams and his brother, you know--they’ve got their flying field a couple miles from the hotel. Well, a guy with nerve enough to go up in one of them things certainly ain’t going to hesitate about speaking to a strange gal when he likes their looks. So this Codd baby had give himself an introduction to my Mrs. and Kate, and I guess they hadn’t sprained an ankle running away from him.
    Of course Ella wanted to know how I’d came out with Lady Perkins. I told her that we hadn’t had much chance to talk because she was in a bridge game with three other people, but I’d met them and they’d all seemed to fall for me strong. Ella wanted to know who they was and I told her their names, all but the one I didn’t get. She squealed when I mentioned Mrs. Snell.
    “Did you hear that, Sis?” she says to Kate. “Tom’s met Mrs. Snell. That’s the woman, you know, that wears them funny clothes and has the two dogs.”
    “You’re describing every woman in the hotel,” I said.
    “But this is the Mrs. Snell,” said the wife. “Her husband’s the sugar man and she’s the daughter of George Henkel, the banker. They say she’s a wonderful bridge player and don’t never play only for great big stakes. I’m wild to meet her.”
    “Yes,” I said, “if they’s one person you should ought to meet, it’s a wonderful bridge player that plays for great big stakes, especially when our expenses is making a bum out of our income and you don’t know a grand slam from no dice.”
    “I don’t expect to gamble with her,” says Ella. “But she’s just the kind of people we want to know.”
    Well, the four of us set there and talked about this and that, and Codd said he hadn’t had time to get his machine put together yet, but when he had her fixed and tested her a few times he would take me up for a ride.
    “You got the wrong number,” I says. “I don’t feel flighty.”
    “Oh, I’d just love it!” said Kate.
    “Well,” says Codd, “you ain’t barred. But I don’t want to have no passengers along till I’m sure she’s working O. K.”
    When I and Ella was upstairs she said that Codd had told them he expected to sell his invention to the Williamses for a cold million. And he had took a big fancy to Kate.
    “Well,” I said, “they say that the reckless aviators makes the best ones, so if him and Kate gets married he’ll be better than ever. He won’t give a damn after that.”
    “You’re always saying something nasty about Sis,” said the Mrs.; “but I know you just talk to hear yourself talk. If I thought you meant it I’d walk out on you.”
    “I’d hate to lose you,” I says, “but if you took her along I wouldn’t write it down as a total loss.”
    The following morning I and the two gals was down on the porch bright and early and in a few minutes, sure enough, along came Lady Perkins, bringing the menagerie back from the parade. She turned them over to the nurse and joined us. She said that Martha, the nurse, had used the rash poison and it had made a kind of a lather on the dogs’ necks and she didn’t know whether to wash it off or not, but it had dried up in the sun. She asked me how many times a day the dope should ought to be put on, and I told her before every meal and at bedtime.
    “But,” I says, “it’s best to not take the dogs right out in the sun where the lather’ll dry. The blanny germ can’t live in that kind of lather, so the longer it stays moist, why, so much the better.”
    Then she asked me was I going to Haverton to see my pets that day and I said yes, and she said she hoped I’d find them much improved. Then Ella cut in and said she understood that Lady Perkins was very fond of bridge.
    “Yes, I am,” says Perk. “Do you people play?”
    “No, we don’t,” says Ella, “but we’d like to learn.”
    “It takes a long wile to learn to play good,” said Perk. “But I do wished they was another real player in the hotel so as we wouldn’t have to take Doctor Platt in. He knows the game, but he don’t know enough to keep still. I don’t mind people talking wile the cards is being dealt, but once the hands is picked up they ought to be absolute silence. Last night I lost about three hundred and seventy dollars just because he talked at the wrong time.”
    “Three hundred and seventy dollars!” said Kate. “My, you must play for big stakes!”
    “Yes, we do,” says Lady Perkins; “and when a person is playing for sums like that it ain’t no time to trifle, especially when you’re playing against an expert like Mrs. Snell.”
    “The game must be awfully exciting,” said Ella. “I wished we could watch it sometime.”
    “I guess it wouldn’t hurt nothing,” says Perkie; “not if you kept still. Maybe you’d bring me luck.”
    “Was you going to play to-night?” asked Kate.
    “No,” says the Lady. “They’s going to be a little dance here to-night and Mr. Snell’s dance mad, so he insists on borrowing his wife for the occasion. Doctor Platt likes to dance too.”
    “We’re all wild about it,” says Kate. “Is this an invitation affair?”
    “Oh, no,” says Perk. “It’s for the guests of the hotel.”
    Then she said good-by to us and went in the dining room. The rest of our conversation all day was about the dance and what should we wear, and how nice and democratic Lady Perkins was, and to hear her talk you wouldn’t never know she had a title. I s’pose the gals thought she ought to stop every three or four steps and declare herself.
    I made the announcement about noon that I wasn’t going to partake in the grand ball. My corn was the alibi. But they wasn’t no way to escape from dressing up and escorting the two gals into the grand ballroom and then setting there with them.
    The dance was a knock-out. Outside of Ella and Kate and the aviator and myself, they was three couple. The Snells was there and so was Doctor Platt. He had a gal with him that looked like she might be his mother with his kid sister’s clothes on. Then they was a pair of young shimmy shakers that ought to of been give their bottle and tucked in the hay at six P. M. A corn wouldn’t of bothered them the way they danced; their feet wasn’t involved in the transaction.
    I and the Mrs. and Kate was the only ones there in evening clothes. The others had attended these functions before and knew that they wouldn’t be enough suckers on hand to make any difference whether you wore a monkey suit or rompers. Besides, it wasn’t Saturday night.
    The music was furnished by the three-piece orchestra that usually done their murder in the summer parlor.
    Ella was expecting me to introduce her and Kate to the Snell gal, but her and her husband was so keen for dancing that they called it off in the middle of the second innings and beat it upstairs. Then Ella said she wouldn’t mind meeting Platt, but when he come past us and I spoke to him he give me a look like you would expect from a flounder that’s been wronged.
    So poor Codd danced one with Kate and one with Ella, and so on, and so on, till finally it got pretty late, a quarter to ten, and our party was the only merrymakers left in the joint. The orchestra looked over at us to see if we could stand some more punishment. The Mrs. told me to go and ask them to play a couple more dances before they quit. They done what I asked them, but maybe I got my orders mixed up.
    The next morning I asked Wurz, the manager, how often the hotel give them dances.
    “Oh,” he says, “once or twice a month.”
    I told him I didn’t see how they could afford it.
    Kate went out after supper this next evening to take an automobile ride with Codd. So when I and Ella had set in the summer parlor a little wile, she proposed that we should go in and watch the bridge game. Well, I wasn’t keen for it, but when you tell wife you don’t want to do something she always says, “Why not?” and even if you’ve got a reason she’ll make a monkey out of it. So we rapped at the door of the red card room and Lady Perkins said, “Come in,” and in we went.
    The two dudes and Mrs. Snell was playing with her again, but Perk was the only one that spoke.
    “Set down,” she said, “and let’s see if you can bring me some luck.”
    So we drawed up a couple of chairs and set a little ways behind her. Her and the anonymous dude was partners against Doc and Mrs. Snell, and they didn’t change all evening. I haven’t played only a few games of bridge, but I know a little about it, and I never see such hands as Perkie held. It was a misdeal when she didn’t have the ace, king and four or five others of one suit and a few picture cards and aces on the side. When she couldn’t get the bid herself she doubled the other pair and made a sucker out of them. I don’t know what they was playing a point, but when they broke up Lady Perkins and her dude was something like seven hundred berries to the good.
    I and Ella went to bed wile they was settling up, but we seen her on the porch in the morning. She smiled at us and says: “You two are certainly grand mascots! I hope you can come in and set behind me again to-night. I ain’t even yet, but one more run of luck like last night’s and I’ll be a winner. Then,” she says, “I s’pose I’ll have to give my mascots some kind of a treat.”
    Ella was tickled to death and couldn’t hardly wait to slip Sis the good news. Kate had been out late and overslept herself and we was half through breakfast when she showed up. The Mrs. told her about the big game and how it looked like we was in strong with the nobility, and Kate said she had some good news of her own; that Codd had as good as told her he was stuck on her.
    “And he’s going to sell his invention for a million,” says Ella. “So I guess we wasn’t as crazy coming out to this place as some people thought we was.”
    “Wait till the machine’s made good,” I said.
    “It has already,” says Kate. “He was up in it yesterday and everything worked perfect and he says the Williamses was wild over it. And what do you think’s going to come off to-morrow morning? He’s going to take me up with him.”
    “Oh, no, Sis!” said Ella. “S’pose something should happen!”
    “No hope,” says I.
    “But even if something should happen,” said Katie, “what would I care as long as it happened to Bob and I together!”
    I told the waitress to bring me another order of fried mush.
    “To-night,” said Kate, “Bob’s going in Town to a theater party with some boys he went to college with. So I can help you bring Lady Perkins good luck.”
    Something told me to crab this proposition and I tried, but it was passed over my veto. So the best I could do was to remind Sis, just before we went in the gambling den, to keep her mouth shut wile the play was going on.
    Perk give us a smile of welcome and her partner smiled too.
    For an hour the game went along about even. Kate acted like she was bored, and she didn’t have nothing to say after she’d told them, wile somebody was dealing, that she was going to have an aeroplane ride in the morning. Finally our side begin to lose, and lose by big scores. They was one time when they was about sixteen hundred points to the bad. Lady Perkins didn’t seem to be enjoying herself and when Ella addressed a couple of remarks to her the cat had her tongue.
    But the luck switched round again and Lady Perk had all but caught up when the blow-off come.
    It was the rubber game, with the score nothing and nothing. The Doc dealt the cards. I was setting where I could see his hand and Perk’s both. Platt had the king, jack and ten and five other hearts. Lady Perkins held the ace and queen of hearts, the other three aces and everything else in the deck.
    The Doc bid two hearts. The other dude and Mrs. Snell passed.
    “Two without,” says Lady Perkins.
    “Three hearts,” says Platt.
    The other two passed again and Perk says: “Three without.”
    Katie had came strolling up and was pretty near behind Perk’s chair.
    “Well,” says Platt, “it looks like----”
    But we didn’t find out what it looked like, as just then Katie says: “Heavens! Four aces! Don’t you wished you was playing penny ante?”
    It didn’t take Lady Perkins no time at all to forget her title.
    “You fool!” she screams, w’eeling round on Kate. “Get out of here, and get out of here quick, and don’t never come near me again! I hope your aeroplane falls a million feet. You little fool!”
    I don’t know how the hand come out. We wasn’t there to see it played.
    Lady Perkins got part of her hope. The aeroplane fell all right, but only a couple of miles instead of a million feet. They say that they was a defect or something in poor Codd’s engine. Anyway, he done an involuntary nose dive. Him and his invention was spilled all over Long Island. But Katie had been awake all night with the hysterics and Ella hadn’t managed to get her to sleep till nine A. M. So when Codd had called for her Ella’d told him that Sis would go some other day. Can you beat it?
    Wile I and Ella was getting ready for supper I made the remark that I s’posed we’d live in a vale of tears for the next few days.
    “No,” said Ella. “Sis is taking it pretty calm. She’s sensible. She says if that could of happened, why the invention couldn’t of been no good after all. And the Williamses probably wouldn’t of give him a plugged dime for it.”
    Lady Perkins didn’t only speak to me once afterwards. I seen her setting on the porch one day, reading a book. I went up to her and said: “Hello.” They wasn’t no answer, so I thought I’d appeal to her sympathies.
    “Maybe you’re still interested in my dogs,” I said. “They was too far gone and the veter’nary had to order them shot.”
    “That’s good,” said Perk, and went on reading.
    CHAPTER IV