We got there at eleven o’clock in the morning, but at three p.m. the gals was still hanging up their Follies costumes, so I beat it out and over to Broadway and got myself a plate of pea soup. When I come back, Ella and Katie was laying down exhausted. Finally I told Ella that I was going to move back to the hotel unless they served meals in this dump, so her and Kate got up and went marketing. Well, when you move from Indiana to the Big Town, of course you can’t be expected to do your own cooking, so what we had that night was from the delicatessen, and for the next four days we lived on dill pickles with dill pickles.
“Listen,” I finally says: “The only reason I consented to leave the hotel was in the hopes I could get a real home cook meal once in a wile and if I don’t get a real home cook meal once in a wile, I leave this dive.”
“Have a little bit of patience,” says Ella. “I advertised in the paper for a cook the day before we come here, the day we rented this apartment. And I offered eight dollars a week.”
“How many replies did you get?” I asked her.
“Well,” she said, “I haven’t got none so far, but it’s probably too soon to expect any.”
“What did you advertise in, the world almanac?” I says.
“No, sir,” she says. “I advertised in the two biggest New York papers, the ones the real estate man recommended.”
“Listen,” I said: “Where do you think you’re at, in Niles, Michigan? If you get a cook here for eight dollars a week, it’ll be a one-armed leper that hasn’t yet reached her teens.”
“What would you do, then?” she asked me.
“I’d write to an employment agency,” I says, “and I’d tell them we’ll pay good wages.”
So she done that and in three days the phone rung and the agency said they had one prospect on hand and did we want her to come out and see us. So Ella said we did and out come a colleen for an interview. She asked how much we was willing to pay.
“Well,” said Ella, “I’d go as high as twelve dollars. Or I’d make it fifteen if you done the washing.”
Kathleen Mavourneen turned her native color.
“Well,” I said, “how much do you want?”
“I’ll work for ninety dollars a month,” she said, only I can’t get the brogue. “That’s for the cookin’ only. No washin’. And I would have to have a room with a bath and all day Thursdays and Sunday evenin’s off.”
“Nothing doing,” said Ella, and the colleen started for the door.
“Wait a minute,” I says. “Listen: Is that what you gals is getting in New York?”
“We’re a spalpeen if we ain’t,” says the colleen bawn.
Well, I was desperate, so I called the wife to one side and says: “For heaven’s sakes, take her on a month’s trial. I’ll pay the most of it with a little piece of money I picked up last week down to Doyle’s. I’d rather do that than get dill pickled for a goal.”
“Could you come right away?” Ella asked her.
“Not for a couple days,” says Kathleen.
“It’s off, then,” I said. “You cook our supper tonight or go back to Greece.”
“Well,” she says, “I guess I could make it if I hurried.”
So she went away and come back with her suitcase, and she cooked our supper that night. And Oh darlint!
Well, Beautiful Katie still had the automobile bug and it wasn’t none of my business to steer her off of it and pretty near every day she would go down to the “row” and look them over. But every night she’d come home whistling a dirge.
“I guess I’ve seen them all,” she’d say, “but they’re too expensive or else they look like they wasn’t.”
But one time we was all coming home in a taxi from a show and come up Broadway and all of a sudden she yelled for the driver to stop.
“That’s a new one in that window,” she says, “and one I never see before.”
Well, the dive was closed at the time and we couldn’t get in, but she insisted on going down there the first thing in the morning and I and Ella must go along. The car was a brand new model Bam Eight.
“How much?” I asked him.
“Four thousand,” he says.
“When could I get one?” says Katie.
“I don’t know,” said the salesman.
“What do you mean?” I asked him. “Haven’t they made none of them?”
“I don’t know,” says the salesman. “This is the only one we got.”
“Has anybody ever rode in one?” I says.
“I don’t know,” said the guy.
So I asked him what made it worth four thousand.
“Well,” he says, “what made this lady want one?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Could I have this one that’s on the floor?” says Katie.
“I don’t know,” said the salesman.
“Well, when do you think I could get one?” says Katie.
“We can’t promise no deliveries,” says the salesman.
Well, that kind of fretted me, so I asked him if they wasn’t a salesman we could talk to.
“You’re talking to one,” he said.
“Yes, I know,” said I. “But I used to be a kind of a salesman myself, and when I was trying to sell things, I didn’t try and not sell them.”
“Yes,” he says, “but you wasn’t selling automobiles in New York in 1920. Listen,” he says: “I’ll be frank with you. We got the New York agency for this car and was glad to get it because it sells for four thousand and anything that sells that high, why the people will eat up, even if it’s a pearl-handle ketchup bottle. If we ever do happen to get a consignment of these cars, they’ll sell like oil stock. The last word we got from the factory was that they’d send us three cars next September. So that means we’ll get two cars a
