So Ella told her that the next noon at breakfast. “And you’d ought to be ashamed of yourself,” says Ella, “for treating a man like that like that.”
“He’s too fresh,” says Katie.
“Well,” said Ella, “if he was a little younger, you wouldn’t mind him being fresh.”
“No,” said Katie, “if he was fresh, I wouldn’t care if he was fresh. But what’s the number of the garage?”
And she didn’t lose no time taking advantage of the old bird. That same afternoon it seemed she had to go shopping and the bus wasn’t good enough no more. She was out in Trumbull’s limmie from two o’clock till pretty near seven. The old guy himself come to our place long about five and wanted to know if we knew where she was at. “I haven’t no idear,” said Ella. “I expected her home long ago. Did you want to use the car?”
“What’s the difference,” I said, “if he wanted to use the car or not? He’s only the owner.”
“Well,” says Trumbull, “when I make an offer I mean it, and that little girl is welcome to use my machine whenever she feels like it.”
So Ella asked him to stay to dinner and he said he would if we’d allow him to bring in some of his hootch, and of course I kicked on that proposition, but he insisted. And when Katie finally did get home, we was all feeling good and so was she and you’d never of thought they’d been any bad feelings the night before.
Trumbull asked her what she’d been buying.
“Nothing,” she says. “I was looking at dresses, but they want too much money.”
“You don’t need no dresses,” he says.
“No, of course not,” said Katie. “But lots of girls is wearing them.”
“Where did you go?” said Ella.
“I forget,” says Katie. “What do you say if we play cards?”
So we played rummy till we was all blear-eyed and the old guy left, saying we’d all go somewheres next day. After he’d gone Ella begin to talk serious.
“Sis,” she says, “here’s the chance of a lifetime. Mr. Trumbull’s head over heels in love with you and all as you have to do is encourage him a little. Can’t you try and like him?”
“They’s nobody I have more respect for,” said Katie, “unless it’s George Washington.”
And then she give a funny laugh and run off to bed.
“I can’t understand Sis no more,” said Ella, when we was alone.
“Why not?” I asked her.
“Why, look at this opportunity staring her in the face,” says the Mrs.
“Listen,” I said: “The first time I stared you in the face, was you thinking about opportunity?”
Well, to make a short story out of it, I was the only one up in the house the next morning when Kathleen said we had a caller. It was the old boy.
“I’m sorry to be so early,” he says, “but I just got a telegram and it means I got to run down to Washington for a few days. And I wanted to tell you that wile I’m gone Ritchey and the car is at your service.”
So I thanked him and he said goodbye and give his regards to the Mrs. and especially Katie, so when they got up I told them about it and I never seen a piece of bad news received so calm as Katie took it.
“But now he’s gone,” I said at the breakfast table, “why not the three of us run out to Bridgeport and call on the Wilmots?”
They’re cousins of mine.
“Oh, fine!” said Ella.
“Wait a minute,” says Katie. “I made a kind of an engagement with a dressmaker for today.”
Well, as I say, to make a short story out of it, it seems like she’d made engagements with the dressmaker every day, but they wasn’t no dresses ever come home.
In about a week Trumbull come back from Washington and the first thing he done was look us up and we had him in to dinner and I don’t remember how the conversation started, but all of a sudden we was on the subject of his driver, Ritchey.
“A great boy,” says Trumbull, “and a boy you can trust. If I didn’t like him for nothing else, I’d like him for how he treats his family.”
“What family?” says Kate.
“Why,” says Trumbull, “his own family: his wife and two kids.”
“My heavens!” says Katie, and kind of fell in a swoon.
So it seems like we didn’t want to live there no more and we moved back to the Baldwin, having sublet the place on the Drive for three thousand a year.
So from then on, we was paying a thousand per annum for an apartment we didn’t live in two weeks. But as I told the gals, we was getting pretty near as much for our money as the people that rented New York apartments and lived in them, too.
III
Lady Perkins
Along the first week in May they was a couple hot days, and Katie can’t stand the heat. Or the cold, or the medium. Anyway, when it’s hot she always says: “I’m simply stifling.” And when it’s cold: “I’m simply frozen.” And when it ain’t neither one: “I wished the weather would do one thing another.” I don’t s’pose she knows what she’s saying when she says any one of them things, but she’s one of these here gals that can’t bear to see a conversation die out and thinks it’s her place to come through with a wise crack whenever they’s a vacuum.
So during this hot spell we was having dinner with a bird named Gene Buck that knowed New York like a book, only he hadn’t never read a book, and Katie made the remark that she was simply stifling.
“If you think this is hot,” says our friend, “just wait till the summer comes. The Old Town certainly steams up in the Old Summer Time.”
So Kate asked
