I was for sticking, on account of the place being cheap, so I said:
“Second prize ain’t so low. And you’re overlooking the two handsome tune thiefs. Besides, what’s the difference who else lives here as long as the rooms is clean and they got a good restaurant? What did our dude cellmates out on Long Island get us? Just trouble!”
But I’d of lose the argument as usual only for Kate oversleeping herself. It was our third morning at the Graham and her and Ella had it planned to go and look for a better place. But Katie didn’t get up till pretty near noon and Ella went without her. So it broke so’s Sis had just came downstairs and turned in her key when the two bellhops reeled in the front door bulging with baggage and escorting Mr. Jimmy Ralston. Yes, Jimmy Ralston the comedian. Or comic, as he calls it.
Well, he ain’t F. X. Bushman, as you know. But no one that seen him could make the mistake of thinking he wasn’t somebody. And he looked good enough to Kate so as she waited till the clerk had him fixed up, and then ast who he was. The clerk told her and she told us when the Mrs. come back from her hunt. Ella begin to name a few joints where we might move, but it seemed like Sis had changed her mind.
“Oh,” she says, “let’s stay here a wile longer, a week anyway.”
“What’s came over you!” ast Ella. “You just said last night that you was bored to death here.”
“Maybe we won’t be so bored now,” said Kate, smiling. “The Graham’s looking up. We’re entertaining a celebrity—Jimmy Ralston of the Follies.”
Well, they hadn’t none of us ever seen him on the stage, but of course we’d heard of him. He’d only just started with the Follies, but he’d made a name for himself at the Winter Garden, where he broke in two or three years ago. And Kate said that a chorus gal she’d met—Jane Abbott—had told her about Ralston and what a scream he was on a party.
“He’s terribly funny when he gets just the right number of drinks,” says Kate.
“Well, let’s stay then,” says Ella. “It’ll be exciting to know a real actor.”
“I would like to know him,” says Katie, “not just because he’s on the stage, but I think it’d be fun to set and listen to him talk. He must say the screamingest things! If we had him round we wouldn’t have to play cards or nothing for entertainment. Only they say it makes people fat to laugh.”
“If I was you, I’d want to get fat,” I said. “Looking like an E string hasn’t started no landslide your way.”
“Is he attractive?” ast the Mrs.
“Well,” said Kate, “he isn’t handsome, but he’s striking looking. You wouldn’t never think he was a comedian. But then, ain’t it generally always true that the driest people have sad faces?”
“That’s a joke!” I said. “Did you ever see Bryan when he didn’t look like somebody was tickling his feet?”
“We’ll have to think up some scheme to get introduced to him,” says Ella.
“It’ll be tough,” I says. “I don’t suppose they’s anybody in the world harder to meet than a member of the Follies, unless it’s an Elk in a Pullman washroom.”
“But listen,” says Kate: “We don’t want to meet him till we’ve saw the show. It’d be awfully embarrassing to have him ask us how we liked the Follies and we’d have to say we hadn’t been to it.”
“Yes,” said the Mrs., “but still if we tell him we haven’t been to it, he may give us free passes.”
“Easy!” I said. “And it’d take a big load off his mind. They say it worries the Follies people half sick wondering what to do with all their free passes.”
“Suppose we go tonight!” says Kate. “We can drop in a hotel somewheres and get seats. The longer we don’t go, the longer we won’t meet him.”
“And the longer we don’t meet him,” I says, “the longer till he gives you the air.”
“I’m not thinking of Mr. Ralston as a possible suitor,” says Katie, swelling up. “But I do want to get acquainted with a man that don’t bore a person to death.”
“Well,” I says, “if this baby’s anything like the rest of your gentleman friends, he won’t hardly be round long enough for that.”
I didn’t make no kick about going to the show. We hadn’t spent no money since we’d moved back to Town and I was as tired as the gals of setting up in the room, playing rummy. They said we’d have to dress, and I kicked just from habit, but I’d got past minding that end of it. They was one advantage in dolling up every time you went anywheres. It meant an hour when they was no chance to do something even sillier.
We couldn’t stop to put on the nose bag at the Graham because the women was scared we’d be too late to get tickets. Besides, when you’re dressed for dinner, you at least want the waiter to be the same. So we took a taxi down to the Spencer, bought Follies seats in the ninth row, and went in to eat. It’s been in all the papers that the price of food has came down, but the hotel man can’t read. They fined us eleven smackers for a two-course banquet that if the Woman’s Guild, here, would dast soak you four bits a plate for it, somebody’d write a nasty letter to the News-Times.
We got in the theater a half hour before the show begin. I put in the time finding out what the men will wear, and the gals looked up what scenes Ralston’d be in. He was only on once in each act. They don’t waste much time on a comedian in the Follies. It don’t take long to
