“I know what you ought to do,” says I. “You ought to go to a European plan hotel.”
“Not w’ile this war’s on,” he says, “and besides, my mother’s a poor sailor.”
“Yes,” says his mother; “I’m a very poor sailor.”
“Jake’s mother can’t stand the water,” says Mrs. Jake.
So I begun to believe that Jake’s wife’s mother-in-law was a total failure as a jolly tar.
Social intercourse was put an end to when the waiter staggered in with their order and our’n. The Missus seemed to of lost her appetite and just set there lookin’ grouchy and tappin’ her fingers on the tablecloth and actin’ like she was in a hurry to get away. I didn’t eat much, neither. It was more fun watchin’.
“Well,” I says, when we was out in the lobby, “we finally got acquainted with some real people.”
“Real people!” says the Missus, curlin’ her lip. “What did you talk to ’em for?”
“I couldn’t resist,” I says. “Anybody that’d order four oyster cocktails and four rounds o’ bluepoints is worth knowin’.”
“Well,” she says, “if they’re there when we go in tomorrow mornin’ we’ll get our table changed again or you can eat with ’em alone.”
But they was absent from the breakfast board.
“They’re probably stayin’ in bed today to get their clo’es washed,” says the Missus.
“Or maybe they’re sick,” I says. “A change of oysters affects some people.”
I was for goin’ over to the island again and gettin’ another o’ them quarter banquets, but the program was for us to walk round town all mornin’ and take a ride in the afternoon.
First, we went to St. George Street and visited the oldest house in the United States. Then we went to Hospital Street and seen the oldest house in the United States. Then we turned the corner and went down St. Francis Street and inspected the oldest house in the United States. Then we dropped into a soda fountain and I had an egg phosphate, made from the oldest egg in the Western Hemisphere. We passed up lunch and got into a carriage drawn by the oldest horse in Florida, and we rode through the country all afternoon and the driver told us some o’ the oldest jokes in the book. He felt it was only fair to give his customers a good time when he was chargin’ a dollar an hour, and he had his gags rehearsed so’s he could tell the same one a thousand times and never change a word. And the horse knowed where the point come in every one and stopped to laugh.
We done our packin’ before supper, and by the time we got to our table Jake and the mourners was through and gone. We didn’t have to ask the waiter if they’d been there. He was perspirin’ like an evangelist.
After supper we said goodbye to the night clerk and twenty-two bucks. Then we bought ourself another ride in the motorbus and landed at the station ten minutes before train-time; so we only had an hour to wait for the train.
Say, I don’t know how many stations they is between New York and San Francisco, but they’s twice as many between St. Augustine and Palm Beach. And our train stopped twice and started twice at every one. I give up tryin’ to sleep and looked out the window, amusin’ myself by readin’ the names o’ the different stops. The only one that expressed my sentiments was Eau Gallie. We was an hour and a half late pullin’ out o’ that joint and I figured we’d be two hours to the bad gettin’ into our destination. But the guy that made out the timetable must of had the engineer down pat, because when we went acrost the bridge over Lake Worth and landed at the Poinciana depot, we was ten minutes ahead o’ time.
They was about two dozen uniformed Ephs on the job to meet us. And when I seen ’em all grab for our baggage with one hand and hold the other out, face up, I knowed why they called it Palm Beach.
IV
The Poinciana station’s a couple hundred yards from one end o’ the hotel, and that means it’s close to five miles from the clerk’s desk. By the time we’d registered and been gave our key and marathoned another five miles or so to where our room was located at, I was about ready for the inquest. But the Missus was full o’ pep and wild to get down to breakfast and look over our stable mates. She says we would eat without changin’ our clo’es; people’d forgive us for not dressin’ up on account o’ just gettin’ there. W’ile she was lookin’ out the window at the royal palms and buzzards, I moseyed round the room inspectin’ where the different doors led to. Pretty near the first one I opened went into a private bath.
“Here,” I says; “they’ve give us the wrong room.”
Then my wife seen it and begin to squeal.
“Goody!” she says. “We’ve got a bath! We’ve got a bath!”
“But,” says I, “they promised we wouldn’t have none. It must be a mistake.”
“Never you mind about a mistake,” she says. “This is our room and they can’t chase us out of it.”
“We’ll chase ourself out,” says I. “Rooms with a bath is fifteen and sixteen dollars and up. Rooms without no bath is bad enough.”
“We’ll keep this room or I won’t stay here,” she says.
“All right, you win,” I says; but I didn’t mean it.
I made her set in the lobby downstairs w’ile I went to the clerk pretendin’ that I had to see about our trunk.
“Say,” I says to him, “you’ve made a bad mistake. You told your man in Chicago that we couldn’t have no room with a bath, and now you’ve give us one.”
“You’re lucky,” he says. “A party who had a bath ordered for these two weeks canceled their reservation and now you’ve got it.”
“Lucky, am I?” I says. “And how
