Well, Bishop put up a great fight, but I wouldn’t break ground, and finally he says he would take us to opera if he could get tickets.
“I’m downtown every day,” I’d told him. “I’ll have ’em reserved for you.”
But no; he wouldn’t see me put to all that trouble for the world; he’d do the buyin’ himself.
So Ada was what he took us to on a Sunday night, when the seats was cut to half price. And when I and him went out between acts to try the limes he catched me with my guard down and frisked the twenty.
Now Bess had tipped off the Wife that her and Bishop was practically engaged, but the night after Ada was the last night of her visit and Bishop hadn’t never came round. So Bessie’d cried all night and tried to get him by phone before she left next day; but neither o’ them two acts done her any good. It looked like he was all through. On the way to the train Bess and the Missus had ruined three or four handkerchiefs and called the bird every low-down flirt they could think of. I didn’t say a word; nor did I perfume my linen with brine.
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