“All right,” I says, “and by September I’ll be all set to write a book on one-handed card games.”
“You’d think,” says Ella, “that some of these women was titled royalties the way they snap at you when you try and be friends with them. But they’s only one in the bunch that’s got any handle to her name; that’s Lady Perkins.”
I asked her which one was that.
“You know,” says Ella. “I pointed her out to you in the dining room. She’s a nice-looking woman, about thirty-five, that sets near our table and walks with a cane.”
“If she eats like some of the rest of them,” I says, “she’s lucky they don’t have to w’eel her.”
“She’s English,” says Ella. “They just come over and her husband’s in Texas on some business and left her here. She’s the one that’s got that dog.”
“That dog!” I said. “You might just as well tell me she’s the one that don’t play the mouth organ. They’ve all got a dog.”
“She’s got two,” said the wife. “But the one I meant is that big German police dog that I’m scared to death of him. Haven’t you saw her out walking with him and the little chow?”
“Yes,” I said, “if that’s what it is. I always wondered what the boys in the Army was talking about when they said they eat chow.”
“They probably meant chowchow,” says the Mrs. “They wouldn’t of had these kind of chows, because in the first place, who would eat a dog, and besides these kind costs too much.”
“Well,” I says, “I’m not interested in the price of chows, but if you want to get acquainted with Lady Perkins, why I can probably fix it for you.”
“Yes, you’ll fix it!” said Ella. “I’m begining to think that if we’d of put you in storage for the summer the folks round here wouldn’t shy away from us like we was leopards that had broke out of a pesthouse. I wished you would try and dress up once in a wile and not always look like you was just going to do the chores. Then maybe I and Sis might get somewheres.”
Well, of course when I told her I could probably fix it up with Lady Perkins, I didn’t mean nothing. But it wasn’t only the next morning when I started making good. I was up and dressed and downstairs about half past eight, and as the gals wasn’t ready for their breakfast yet I went out on the porch and set down. They wasn’t nobody else there, but pretty soon I seen Lady Perkins come up the path with her two whelps. When she got to the porch steps their nurse popped out of the servants’ quarters and took them round to the grillroom for their breakfast. I s’pose the big one ordered sauerkraut and kalter Aufschnitt, wile the chow had tea and eggs fo yung. Anyway, the Perkins dame come up on the porch and flopped into the chair next to mine.
In a few minutes Ed Wurz, the manager of the hotel, showed, with a bag of golf instruments and a trick suit. He spotted me and asked me if I didn’t want to go along with him and play.
“No,” I said. “I only played once in my life.”
“That don’t make no difference,” he says. “I’m a bum myself. I just play shinny, you might say.”
“Well,” I says, “I can’t anyway, on account of my dogs. They been giving me a lot of trouble.”
Of course I was referring to my feet, but he hadn’t no sooner than went on his way when Lady Perkins swung round on me and says: “I didn’t know you had dogs. Where do you keep them?”
At first I was going to tell her “In my shoes,” but I thought I might as well enjoy myself, so I said: “They’re in the dog hospital over to Haverton.”
“What ails them?” she asked me.
Well, I didn’t know nothing about cay-nine diseases outside of hydrophobia, which don’t come till August, so I had to make one up.
“They got blanny,” I told her.
“Blanny!” she says. “I never heard of it before.”
“No,” I said. “It hasn’t only been discovered in this country just this year. It got carried up here from Peru some way another.”
“Oh, it’s contagious, then!” says Lady Perkins.
“Worse than measles or lockjaw,” says I. “You take a dog that’s been in the same house with a dog that’s got blanny, and it’s a miracle if they don’t all get it.”
She asked me if I’d had my dogs in the hotel.
“Only one day,” I says, “the first day we come, about a week ago. As soon as I seen what was the matter with them, I took them over to Haverton in a sanitary truck.”
“Was they mingling with the other dogs here?” she says.
“Just that one day,” I said.
“Heavens!” said Lady Perkins. “And what’s the symptoms?”
“Well,” I said, “first you’ll notice that they keep their tongue stuck out a lot and they’re hungry a good deal of the time, and finally they show up with a rash.”
“Then what happens?” she says.
“Well,” said I, “unless they get the best of treatment, they kind of dismember.”
Then she asked me how long it took for the symptoms to show after a dog had been exposed. I told her any time between a week and four months.
“My dogs has been awful hungry lately,” she says, “and they most always keeps their tongue stuck out. But they haven’t no rash.”
“You’re all right, then,” I says. “If you give them treatments before the rash shows up, they’s no danger.”
“What’s the treatment?” she asked me.
“You rub the back of their neck with some kind of dope,” I told her. “I forget what it is, but if you say the word, I can get you a bottle of it when I go over to the hospital this afternoon.”
“I’d be ever so much obliged,” she says, “and I hope you’ll find your
