“Maybe you’ll win the prize,” says Mr. Garrett.
“They ain’t much chance,” I says. “I ain’t played this game for a long w’ile.”
“Why, your wife was just tellin’ me you played last night,” he says.
“I mean,” says I, “that I didn’t play for a long w’ile before last night; not for thirty-six years,” I says.
Well, when everybody’d got through chokin’ down the shot, they brought in some drowned toadstools, and then some little slices o’ beef about the size of a checker, and seven Saratoga chips apiece, and half a dozen string beans. Those that was still able to set up under this load finished up on sliced tomatoes that was caught too young and a nickel’s worth of ice-cream and an eyedropper full o’ coffee.
“Before I forget it,” says Mrs. Collins, w’ile we was staggerin’ out o’ the dinin’ room, “you’re all comin’ to my house next Tuesday night.”
I was walkin’ right behind her.
“And I got a suggestion for you,” I says, low enough so as they couldn’t nobody else hear: “Throw some o’ the prize money into the dinner; and if they’s any skimpin’ to be done, do it on the prizes.”
She didn’t say nothin’ back, because Mrs. Garrett had started to hand us the little cards that showed where we was to play.
“I suppose I better tell you our rules,” she says to me. “Each table plays four deals. Then the winners moves w’ile the losers sets still, except at the first table, where the winners sets still and the losers moves. You change pardners after every four deals. You count fifty for a game and a hundred and fifty for a rubber.”
“The way I been playin’,” I says, “it was thirty for a game.”