Chapter V — Katie Wins a Home (3)

    The Captain thinks it all over and decides it’s his move. He makes Bridget promise to never tell that she seen him and he says good-by to she and the kid and goes out into the night.
    Maizie comes in, saying she heard a noise and what was it? Was somebody here? “Just the boy with the evening paper,” says Bridget. And the cat’s got Bobbie’s tongue. And Maizie don’t even ask for the paper. She probably figured to herself it was the old story; that Grimes was still getting his bumps.
    Well, I wished you could of read what the papers wrote up about the show. One of them said that Bridget seen a ghost at the Olney theater last night and if anybody else wanted to see it, they better go quick because it wouldn’t be walking after this week. Not even on crutches. The mildest thing they said about Ralston was that he was even funnier than when he was in the Follies and tried to be. And they said the part of Bridget was played by a young actress that they hoped would make a name for herself, because Ralston had probably called her all he could think of.
    We waited at the stage door that night and when Kate come out, she was crying. Ralston had canned her from the show.
    “That’s nothing to cry about,” I says. “You’re lucky! It’s just like as if a conductor had put you off a train a couple of minutes before a big smash-up.”
    The programme had been to all go somewheres for supper and celebrate the play’s success. But all Katie wanted now was to get in a taxi and go home and hide.
    On the way, I ast her how much she was in so far.
    “Just ten thousand,” she says.
    “Ten thousand!” I said. “Why, they was only one piece of scenery and that looked like they’d bought it secondhand from the choir boys’ minstrels. They couldn’t of spent one thousand, let alone ten.”
    “We had to pay the theater a week’s rent in advance,” she says. “And Jimmy give five thousand to a man for the idear.”
    “The idear for what?” I ast.
    “The idear for the play,” she said.
    “That stops me!” I says. “This baby furnishes idears for all the good actors in the world, but when he wants one for himself, he goes out and pays $5,000 for it. And if he got a bargain, you’re Mrs. Fiske.”
    “Who sold him the idear?” ast Ella.
    “He wouldn’t tell me,” says Kate.
    “Ponzi,” I said.
    Ralston called Kate up the next noon and made a date with her at the theater. He said that he was sorry he’d been rough. Before she went I ast her to give me a check for the forty thousand she had left so’s I could buy back some of her bonds.
    “I haven’t got only $25,000,” she says. “I advanced Jimmy fifteen thousand for his own account, so’s he wouldn’t have to bother me every time they was bills to meet.”
    So I said: “Listen: I’ll go see him with you and if he don’t come clean with that money, I’ll knock him deader’n his play.”
    “Thank you!” she says. “I’ll tend to my own affairs alone.”
    She come back late in the afternoon, all smiles.
    “Everything’s all right,” she said. “I give him his choice of letting me be in the play or giving me my money.”
    “And which did he choose?” I ast her.
    “Neither one,” she says. “We’re going to get married.”
    “Bridget” went into the ashcan Saturday night and the wedding come off Monday. Monday night they left for Boston, where the Follies was playing. Kate told us they’d took Ralston back at the same salary he was getting before.
    “How much is that?” I ast her.
    “Four hundred a week,” she says.
    Well, two or three days after they’d left, I got up my nerve and says to the Mrs.:
    “Do you remember what we moved to the Big Town for? We done it to see Life and get Katie a husband. Well, we got her a kind of a husband and I’ll tell the world we seen Life. How about moseying back to South Bend?”
    “But we haven’t no home there now.”
    “Nor we ain’t had none since we left there,” I says. “I’m going down and see what’s the first day we can get a couple of lowers.”
    “Get uppers if it’s quicker,” says the Mrs.
    So here we are, really enjoying ourselfs for the first time in pretty near two years. And Katie’s in New York, enjoying herself, too, I suppose. She ought to be, married to a comedian. It must be such fun to just set and listen to him talk.
    The End