Here, though, was Bess back in town and Old Man Short makin' up to her again. And they'd been correspondin'. The second time was li'ble to take, unless outside brains come to the rescue.

If I'd thought for a minute that they'd leave us out of it and go away somewhere by themself and live--the North Side, or one o' the suburbs, or Wabash--I wouldn't of cared how many times they married each other.

But I had him spotted for a loafer that couldn't earn a livin', and I knowed what the maritile nuptials between Bess and he meant--it meant that I and the Missus would have all the pleasures o' conductin' a family hotel without the pain o' makin' out receipts.

Now I always wanted a boy and a girl, but I wanted 'em to be kind o'

youngish when I got 'em. I never craved addin' a married couple to my family--not even if they was crazy about rummy and paid all their bills.

And when it come to Bishop and Bess, well, they was just as welcome to my home as Villa and all the little Villains.

It wasn't just Bishop, with his quaint habit o' never havin' car fare.

Bess, in her way, was as much of a liability. You couldn't look at her without a slight relapse. She had two complexions--A.M. and P.M. The P.M. wasn't so bad, but she could of put the other in her vanity box for a mirror. Her nose curved a little away from the batsman and wasn't no wider than a Julienne potato, and yet it had to draw in to get between her eyes. Her teeth was real pretty and she always kept her lips ajar.

But the baseball reporters named Matty's favorite delivery after her chin, and from there down the curves was taboo.

Where she made a hit with Bishop was laughin' at everything he pulled--that is, he thought she was laughin'. The fact was that she was s.n.a.t.c.hin' the chance to show more o' them teeth. They wasn't no use showin' 'em to me; so I didn't get laughs from her on my stuff, only when he or some other stranger was round. And if my stuff wasn't funnier than Bishop's I'll lay down my life for Austria.

As a general rule, I don't think a man is justified in interferin' with other people's hymeneal intentions, but it's different when the said intentions is goin' to make your own home a h.e.l.l.

It was up to me to inst.i.tute proceedin's that would check the flight o'

these two cooin' doves before their wings took 'em to Crown Point in a yellow flivver.

And I seen my duty all the more clear when the pair come home from the ball game the day after Bessie's arrival, and not only told me that the White Sox got another trimmin' but laughed when they said it.

"Well, Bishop," I says when we set down to supper, "how many six-reelers are you turnin' out a day?"

"About one every two weeks is the limit," says Bishop.

"I'll bet it is," I says. "And who are you workin' for now?"

"The Western Film Corporation," he says. "But I'm goin' to quit 'em the first o' the month."

"What for?" I ast him.

"Better offer from the Criterion," he says.

"Better'n ten thousand a year?" says I.

"Sure!" he says.

"Twenty dollars better?" I says.

He blushed and the Wife sunk my shin with a patent-leather torpedo. Then Bishop says:

"The raise I'm gettin' would make twenty dollars look sick."

"If you'd give it to me," I says, "I'd try and nurse it back to health."

After supper the Missus called me out in the kitchen to bawl me out.

"It's rough stuff to embarra.s.s a guest," she says.

"He's always embarra.s.sed," says I. "But you admit now, don't you, that I was tellin' the truth about him touchin' me?"

"Yes," she says.

"Well," says I, "if he's so soiled with money, why don't he pay a little puny debt?"

"He's probably forgot it," says she.

"Did he look like he'd forgot it?" I ast her. And she had no come-back.

But when my Missus can overlook a guy stingin' me for legal tender, it means he's in pretty strong with her. And I couldn't count on no help from her, even if Bishop was a murderer, so long as Bess wanted him.

The next mornin', just to amuse myself, I called up the Criterion people and ast them if they was goin' to hire a scenario writer name Elmer Bishop.

"Never heard of him," was what they told me.

So I called up the Western.

"Elmer Bishop?" they says. "He ain't no scenario writer. He's what we call an extra. He plays small parts sometimes."

"And what pay do them extras drag down?" I ast.

"Five dollars a day, but nothin' when they don't work," was the thrillin' response.

My first idea was to slip this dope to the Wife and Bess both. But what'd be the use? They wouldn't believe it even if they called up and found out for themself; and if they did believe it, Bessie'd say a man's pay didn't make no difference where true love was concerned, and the Missus would take her part, and they'd cry a little, and wind up by sendin' for Bishop and a minister to make sure o' the ceremony comin'

off before Bishop lost his five-dollar job and croaked himself.

Then I thought o' forbiddin' him the hospitality o' my abode. But that'd be just as useless. They'd meet somewheres else, and if I threatened to lock Bess out, the Wife'd come back with a counter-proposition to not give me no more stewed beets or banana souffles. Besides that, strong-arm methods don't never kill sweet love, but act just the opposite and make the infected parties more set on gettin' each other.

This here case was somethin' delicate, and if a man didn't handle it exactly right you wouldn't never get over bein' sorry.

So, instead o' me quarrelin' with the Wife and Bess, and raisin' a fuss at Bishop spendin' eight evenin's a week with us, I kept my clam closed and tried to be pleasant, even when I'd win a hand o' rummy and see this guy carelessly lose a few of his remainin' face cards under the table.

We had an awful spell o' heat in July and it wasn't no fun playin' cards or goin' to pitcher shows, or nothin'. Sat.u.r.day afternoons and Sundays, I and the Missus would go over to the lake and splash. Bess only went with us a couple o' times; that was because she couldn't get Bishop to come along. He'd always say he was busy, or he had a cold and was afraid o' makin' it worse. So far as I was concerned, I managed to enjoy my baths just as much with them two stayin' away. The sight o' Bessie in a bathin' suit crabbed the exhilaratin' effects o' the swim. When she stood up in the water the minnows must of thought two people was still-fishin'.

It was one night at supper, after Bessie'd been with us about a month, when the idear come to me. Bishop was there, and I'd been lookin' at he and Bess, and wonderin' what they'd seen in each other. The Missus ast 'em if they was goin' out some place.

"No," says Bessie. "It's too hot and they ain't no place to go."

"They's lots o' places to go," says the Wife. "For one thing, they're havin' grand opera out to Ravinia Park."

"I wouldn't give a nickel to see a grand opera," says Bess, "unless it was _Ada_, that Elmer took us to last winter."

So they went on talkin' about somethin' else. I don't know what, because the minute she mentioned _Ada_ I was all set.

I guess maybe I'd better tell you a little about this here opera, so's you'll see how it helped me out. A fella named Gus Verdi wrote it, and the scenes is laid along the Illinois Central, round Memphis and Cairo.

Ada's a big wench, with a pretty voice, and she's the hired girl in the mayor's family. The mayor's daughter gets stuck on a fat little tenor that you can't p.r.o.nounce and that should of had a lawn mower ran over his chin. The tenor likes the colored girl better than the mayor's daughter, and the mayor's daughter tries every way she can think of to bust it up and grab off the tenor for herself; but nothin' doin'!

Finally the mayor has the tenor pinched for keepin' open after one o'clock, and the law's pretty strict; so, instead o' just finin' him, they lock him up in a safety-deposit vault. Well, the wench is down in the vault, too, dustin' off the papers and cleanin' the silver, and they don't know she's there; so the two o' them's locked up together and can't get out. And when they can't get away and haven't got n.o.body else to look at or talk to, they get so's they hate each other; and finally they can't stand it no longer and they both die. They's pretty music in it, but if old Gus had of seen the men that was goin' to be in the show he'd of laid the scenes in Beardstown instead o' Memphis.

Well, do you get the idear? If the mayor's daughter had of been smart, instead o' tryin' to keep the tenor and Ada from bein' with each other she'd of locked 'em up together a long while ago, and, first thing you know, they'd of been sick o' one another; and just before they died she could of let 'em out and had the tenor for herself without no argument.