“Dear ones is right,” I said. “They cost a pile of jack, and the bird I bought them off of told me I should ought to get them insured, but I didn’t. So if anything happens to them now, I’m just that much out.”
Next she asked me what kind of dogs they was.
“Well,” I said, “you might maybe never of heard of them, as they don’t breed them nowheres only way down in Dakota. They call them yaphounds—I don’t know why; maybe on account of the noise they make. But they’re certainly a grand-looking dog and they bring a big price.”
She set there a wile longer and then got up and went inside, probably to the nursery to look for signs of rash.
Of course I didn’t tell the Mrs. and Kate nothing about this incidence. They wouldn’t of believed it if I had of, and besides, it would be a knockout if things broke right and Lady Perkins come up and spoke to me wile they was present, which is just what happened.
During the afternoon I strolled over to the drug store and got me an empty pint bottle. I took it up in the room and filled it with water and shaving soap. Then I laid low till evening, so as Perk would think I had went to Haverton.
I and Ella and Kate breezed in the dining room kind of late and we hadn’t no more than ordered when I seen the Lady get up and start out. She had to pass right past us, and when I looked at her and smiled she stopped.
“Well,” she said, “how’s your dogs?”
I got up from the table.
“A whole lot better, thank you,” says I, and then I done the honors. “Lady Perkins,” I said, “meet the wife and sister-in-law.”
The two gals staggered from their chairs, both pop-eyed. Lady Perkins bowed to them and told them to set down. If she hadn’t the floor would of bounced up and hit them in the chin.
“I got a bottle for you,” I said. “I left it upstairs and I’ll fetch it down after supper.”
“I’ll be in the red card room,” says Perk, and away she went.
I wished you could of see the two gals. They couldn’t talk for a minute, for the first time in their life. They just set there with their mouth open like a baby blackbird. Then they both broke out with a rash of questions that come so fast I couldn’t understand none of them, but the general idear was, What the hell!
“They’s no mystery about it,” I said. “Lady Perkins was setting out on the porch this morning and you two was late getting down to breakfast, so I took a walk, and when I come back she noticed that I kind of limped and asked me what ailed my feet. I told her they always swoll up in warm weather and she said she was troubled the same way and did I know any medicine that shrank them. So I told her I had a preparation and would bring her a bottle of it.”
“But,” says Kate, “I can’t understand a woman like she speaking to a man she don’t know.”
“She’s been eying me all week,” I said. “I guess she didn’t have the nerve to break the ice up to this morning; then she got desperate.”
“She must of,” said Ella.
“I wished,” said Kate, “that when you introduce me to people you’d give them my name.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I couldn’t recall it for a minute, though your face is familiar.”
“But listen,” says the wife. “What ails your dogs is a corn. You haven’t got no swelled feet and you haven’t got no medicine for them.”
“Well,” I says, “what I give her won’t hurt her. It’s just a bottle of soap and water that I mixed up, and pretty near everybody uses that once in a wile without no bad after effects.”
Now, the whole three of us had been eating pretty good ever since we’d came to the Decker. After living à la carte at Big Town prices for six months, the American plan was sweet patootie. But this night the gals not only skrimped themselves but they was in such a hurry for me to get through that my molars didn’t hardly have time to identify what all was scampering past them. Ella finally got so nervous that I had to take off the feed bag without dipping my bill into the stewed rhubarb.
“Lady Perkins will get tired waiting for you,” she says. “And besides, she won’t want us horning in there and interrupting them after their game’s started.”
“Us!” said I. “How many do you think it’s going to take to carry this bottle?”
“You don’t mean to say we can’t go with you!” said Kate.
“You certainly can’t,” I says. “I and the nobility won’t have our little romance knocked for a gool by a couple of country gals that can’t get on speaking terms with nobody but the chambermaid.”
“But they’ll be other people there,” says Kate. “She can’t play cards alone.”
“Who told you she was going to play cards?” I says. “She picked the red card room because we ain’t liable to be interrupted there. As for playing cards alone, what else have I done all week? But when I get there she won’t have to play solitary. It’ll be two-handed hearts; where if you was to crowd in, it couldn’t be nothing but rummy.”
Well, they finally dragged me from the table, and the gals took a seat in the lobby wile I went upstairs after the medicine. But I hadn’t no sooner than got a hold of the bottle when Ella come in the room.
“Listen,” she says. “They’s a catch in this somewheres. You needn’t to try and tell me that a woman like Lady Perkins is trying to start a flirtation with a yahoo. Let’s hear what really come off.”
“I already told you,” I said. “The woman’s nuts over
