They planted me in an end seat, a location just right for a man who had stretched himself across a railway track and had both legs cut off at the abdomen. Not being that kind of man, I had to sit so far back that very few of my comestibles carried more than halfway to their target.
After dinner I was all ready to go home and get something to eat, but it had been darkening up outdoors for half an hour and now such a storm broke that I knew it was useless trying to persuade Florence to make a start.
“We’ll play some bridge,” said Dwan, and to my surprise he produced a card-table that was nowhere near “in the period.”
At my house there was a big center chandelier that lighted up a bridge game no matter in what part of the room the table was put. But here we had to waste forty minutes moving lamps and wires and stands and when they were all fixed, you could tell a red suit from a black suit, but not a spade from a club. Aside from that and the granite-bottomed “Windsor” chairs and the fact that we played “families” for a cent a point and Florence and I won $12 and didn’t get paid, it was one of the pleasantest afternoons I ever spent gambling.
The rain stopped at five o’clock and as we splashed through the puddles of Dwan’s driveway, I remarked to Florence that I had never known she was such a kidder.
“What do you mean?” she asked me.
“Why, your pretending to admire all that junk,” I said.
“Junk!” said Florence. “That is one of the most beautifully furnished homes I have ever seen!”
And so far as I can recall, that was her last utterance in my presence for six nights and five days.
At lunch on Saturday I said: “You know I like the silent drama one evening a week, but not twenty-four hours a day every day. What’s the matter with you? If it’s laryngitis, you might write me notes.”
“I’ll tell you what’s the matter!” she burst out. “I hate this house and everything in it! It’s too new! Everything shines! I loathe new things! I want a home like Mildred’s, with things in it that I can look at without blushing for shame. I can’t invite anyone here. It’s too hideous. And I’ll never be happy here a single minute as long as I live!”
Well, I don’t mind telling that this kind of got under my skin. As if I hadn’t intended to give her a pleasant surprise! As if Wolfe Brothers, in business thirty years, didn’t know how to furnish a home complete! I was pretty badly hurt, but I choked it down and said, as calmly as I could:
“If you’ll be a little patient, I’ll try to sell this house and its contents for what I paid for it and them. It oughtn’t to be much trouble; there are plenty of people around who know a bargain. But it’s too bad you didn’t confess your barn complex to me long ago. Only last February, old Ken Garrett had to sell his establishment and the men who bought it turned it into a garage. It was a livery-stable which I could have got for the introduction of a song, or maybe just the vamp. And we wouldn’t have had to spend a nickel to make it as nice and comfortable and homey as your friend Mildred’s dump.”
Florence was on her way upstairs before I had finished my speech.
I went down to Earl Benham’s to see if my new suit was ready. It was and I put it on and left the old one to be cleaned and pressed.
On the street I met Harry Cross.
“Come up to my office,” he said. “There’s something in my desk that may interest you.”
I accepted his invitation and from three different drawers he pulled out three different quart bottles of Early American rye.
Just before six o’clock I dropped in Kane’s store and bought myself a pair of shears, a blow torch and an ax. I started home, but stopped among the trees inside my front gate and cut big holes in my coat and trousers. Alongside the path to the house was a sizable mud puddle. I waded in it. And I bathed my gray felt hat.
Florence was sitting on the floor of the living-room, reading. She seemed a little upset by my appearance.
“Good heavens! What’s happened?”
“Nothing much,” said I. “I just didn’t want to look too new.”
“What are those things you’re carrying?”
“Just a pair of shears, a blow torch and an ax. I’m going to try and antique this place and I think I’ll begin on the dining-room table.”
Florence went into her scream, dashed upstairs and locked herself in. I went about my work and had the dinner-table looking pretty Early when the maid smelled fire and rushed in. She rushed out again and came back with a pitcher of water. But using my vest as a snuffer, I had had the flames under control all the while and there was nothing for her to do.
“I’ll just nick it up a little with this ax,” I told her, “and by the time I’m through, dinner ought to be ready.”
“It will never be ready as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “I’m leaving just as soon as I can pack.”
And Florence had the same idea—vindicating the old adage about great minds.
I heard the front door slam and the back door slam, and I felt kind of tired and sleepy, so I knocked off work and went up to bed.
That’s my side of the story, Eddie, and it’s true so help me my bootlegger. Which reminds me that the man who sold Harry the rye makes
