So then he begin to yawn and I said, “Come on, girls,” and we got a taxi and beat it home. And I wouldn’t of said nothing about it, only if Katie had of been able to buy her Bam, what come off might of never came off.
It wasn’t only two nights later when Ella come in from shopping all excited. “Well,” she said, “talk about experiences! I just had a ride home and it wasn’t in a street car and it wasn’t in a taxi and it wasn’t on the subway and it wasn’t on a bus.”
“Let’s play charades,” said I.
“Tell us, Sis,” says Katie.
“Well,” said the wife, “I was down on Fifth Avenue, waiting for a bus, and all of a sudden a big limousine drew up to the curb with a livery chauffeur, and a man got out of the back seat and took off his hat and asked if he couldn’t see me home. And of course I didn’t pay no attention to him.”
“Of course not,” I said.
“But,” says Ella, “he says, ‘Don’t take no offense. I think we’re next door neighbors. Don’t you live acrost the hall on the sixth floor of the Lucius?’ So of course I had to tell him I did.”
“Of course,” I said.
“And then he said,” says Ella, “ ‘Is that your sister living with you?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she lives with my husband and I.’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘if you’ll get in and let me take you home, I’ll tell you what a beautiful girl I think she is.’ So I seen then that he was all right, so I got in and come home with him. And honestly, Sis, he’s just wild about you!”
“What is he like?” says Katie.
“He’s stunning,” says the wife. “Tall and wears dandy clothes and got a cute mustache that turns up.”
“How old?” says Kate, and the Mrs. kind of stalled.
“Well,” she said, “he’s the kind of a man that you can’t tell how old they are, but he’s not old. I’d say he was, well, maybe he’s not even that old.”
“What’s his name?” asked Kate.
“Trumbull,” said the Mrs. “He said he was keeping bachelor quarters, but I don’t know if he’s really a bachelor or a widower. Anyway, he’s a dandy fella and must have lots of money. Just imagine living alone in one of these apartments!”
“Imagine living in one of them whether you’re a bachelor or a Mormon,” I says.
“Who said he lived alone?” asked Katie.
“He did,” says the Mrs. “He told me that him and his servants had the whole apartment to themselves. And that’s what makes it so nice, because he’s asked the three of us over there to dinner tomorrow night.”
“What makes it so nice?” I asked her.
“Because it does,” said Ella, and you can’t ever beat an argument like that.
So the next night the two girls donned their undress uniforms and made me put on the oysters and horse radish and we went acrost the hall to meet our hero. The door was opened by a rug peddler and he showed us into a twin brother to our own living room, only you could get around it without being Houdini.
“Mr. Trumbull will be right out,” said Omar.
The ladies was shaking like an aspirin leaf, but in a few minutes, in come mine host. However old Ella had thought he wasn’t, she was wrong. He’d seen baseball when the second bounce was out. If he’d of started his career as a barber in Washington, he’d of tried to wish a face massage on Zachary Taylor. The only thing young about him was his teeth and his clothes. His dinner suit made me feel like I was walking along the station platform at Toledo, looking for hot boxes.
“Ah, here you are!” he says. “It’s mighty nice of you to be neighborly. And so this is the young sister. Well,” he says to me, “you had your choice, and as far as I can see, it was heads you win and tails you win. You’re lucky.”
So when he’d spread all the salve, he rung the bell and in come Allah with cocktails. I don’t know what was in them, but when Ella and Katie had had two apiece, they both begin to trill.
Finally we was called in to dinner and every other course was hootch. After the solid and liquid diet, he turned on the steam piano and we all danced. I had one with Beautiful Katie and the rest of them was with my wife, or, as I have nicknamed them, quarrels. Well, the steam run out of three of us at the same time, the piano inclusive, and Ella sat down in a chair that was made for Eddie Foy’s family and said how comfortable it was.
“Yes,” says Methuselah, “that’s my favorite chair. And I bet you wouldn’t believe me if I told you how much it cost.”
“Oh, I’d like to know,” says Ella.
“Two hundred dollars,” says mine host.
“Do you still feel comfortable?” I asked her.
“Speaking about furniture,” said the old bird, “I’ve got a few bits that I’m proud of. Would you like to take a look at them?”
So the gals said they would and we had to go through the entire apartment, looking at bits. The best bits I seen was tastefully wrapped up in kegs and cases. It seemed like every time he opened a drawer, a cork popped up. He was a hundred percent proofer than the governor of New Jersey. But he was giving us a lecture on the furniture itself, not the polish.
“I picked up this dining room suit for eighteen hundred,” he says.
“Do you mean the one you’ve got on?” I asked him, and the gals give me a dirty look.
“And this rug,” he says, stomping on an old rag carpet. “How much do you suppose that cost?”
It was my first guess, so I
