“They don’t,” he says. “All the ones that’s got a piece of change ducks out somewheres where they can get the air.”
“Where do they go?” Katie asked him.
“Well,” he says, “the most of my pals goes to Newport or Maine or up in the Adirondacks. But of course them places is out of most people’s reach. If I was you folks I’d go over on Long Island somewheres and either take a cottage or live in one of them good hotels.”
“Where, for instance?” says my Mrs.
“Well,” he said, “some people takes cottages, but the rents is something fierce, and besides, the desirable ones is probably all eat up by this time. But they’s plenty good hotels where you get good service and swell meals and meet good people; they won’t take in no riffraff. And they give you a pretty fair rate if they know you’re going to make a stay.”
So Ella asked him if they was any special one he could recommend.
“Let’s think a minute,” he says.
“Let’s not strain ourself,” I said.
“Don’t get cute!” said the Mrs. “We want to get some real information and Mr. Buck can give it to us.”
“How much would you be willing to pay?” said Buck.
It was Ella’s turn to make a wise crack.
“Not no more than we have to,” she says.
“I and my sister has got about eight thousand dollars per annum between us,” said Katie, “though a thousand of it has got to go this year to a man that cheated us up on Riverside Drive.
“It was about a lease. But papa left us pretty well off; over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“Don’t be so secret with Mr. Buck,” I says. “We’ve knew him pretty near a week now. Tell him about them four-dollar stockings you bought over on Fifth Avenue and the first time you put them on they got as many runs as George Sisler.”
“Well,” said Buck, “I don’t think you’d have no trouble getting comfortable rooms in a good hotel on seven thousand dollars. If I was you I’d try the Hotel Decker. It’s owned by a man named Decker.”
“Why don’t he call it the Griffith?” I says.
“It’s located at Tracy Estates,” says Buck. “That’s one of the garden spots of Long Island. It’s a great big place, right up to the minute, and they give you everything the best. And they’s three good golf courses within a mile of the hotel.”
The gals told him they didn’t play no golf.
“You don’t know what you’ve missed,” he says.
“Well,” I said, “I played a game once myself and missed a whole lot.”
“Do they have dances?” asked Kate.
“Plenty of them,” says Buck, “and the guests is the nicest people you’d want to meet. Besides all that, the meals is included in the rates, and they certainly set a nasty table.”
“I think it sounds grand,” said the Mrs. “How do you get there?”
“Go over to the Pennsylvania Station,” says Buck, “and take the Long Island Railroad to Jamaica. Then you change to the Haverton branch. It don’t only take a half hour altogether.”
“Let’s go over tomorrow morning and see can we get rooms,” said Katie.
So Ella asked how that suited me.
“Go just as early as you want to,” I says. “I got a date to run down to the Aquarium and see the rest of the fish.”
“You won’t make no mistake stopping at the Decker,” says Buck.
So the gals thanked him and I paid the check so as he would have more to spend when he joined his pals up to Newport.
Well, when Ella and Kate come back the next afternoon, I could see without them telling me that it was all settled. They was both grinning like they always do when they’ve pulled something nutty.
“It’s a good thing we met Mr. Buck,” said the Mrs., “or we mightn’t never of heard of this place. It’s simply wonderful. A double room with a bath for you and I and a room with a bath for Katie. The meals is throwed in, and we can have it all summer.”
“How much?” I asked her.
“Two hundred a week,” she said. “But you must remember that’s for all three of us and we get our meals free.”
“And I s’pose they also furnish knobs for the bedroom doors,” says I.
“We was awful lucky,” said the wife. “These was the last two rooms they had, and they wouldn’t of had those only the lady that had engaged them canceled her reservation.”
“I wished I’d met her when I was single,” I says.
“So do I,” says Ella.
“But listen,” I said. “Do you know what two hundred a week amounts to? It amounts to over ten thousand a year, and our income is seven thousand.”
“Yes,” says Katie, “but we aren’t only going to be there twenty weeks, and that’s only four thousand.”
“Yes,” I said, “and that leaves us three thousand for the other thirty-two weeks, to pay for board and room and clothes and show tickets and a permanent wave every other day.”
“You forget,” said Kate, “that we still got our principal, which we can spend some of it and not miss it.”
“And you also forget,” said the Mrs., “that the money belongs to Sis and I, not you.”
“I’ve got a sweet chance of forgetting that,” I said. “It’s hammered into me three times a day. I hear about it pretty near as often as I hear that one of you’s lost their new silk bag.”
“Well, anyway,” says Ella, “it’s all fixed up and we move out there early tomorrow morning, so you’ll have to do your packing tonight.”
I’m not liable to celebrate the anniversary of the next day’s trip. Besides the trunks, the gals had a suitcase and a grip apiece and I had a suitcase. So that give me five pieces of baggage to wrestle, because of course the gals had to carry their parasol in one hand and their wrist watch in the other. A
