“Nice work!” I says to the Missus. “You’re the Philadelphia Athletics of auction bridge.”
“What was you biddin’ no trump on?” she says. “I thought, o’ course, you’d have one high heart and some suit.”
“You don’t want to start thinkin’ at your age,” I says. “You can’t learn an old dog new tricks.”
Mrs. Nap’s husband cut in.
“O’ course,” he says, “it’s a man’s privilege to call your wife anything you feel like callin’ her. But your Missus don’t hardly look old to me.”
“No, not comparatively speakin’,” I says, and he shut up.
They moved on and along come Garrett and Mrs. Messenger. I and Mrs. Messenger was pardners and I thought for a w’ile we was goin’ to win. But Garrett and the Missus had a bouquet o’ four-leaf clovers in the last two deals and licked us. Garrett wasn’t supposed to be as smart as his wife, but he was fox enough to keep biddin’ over my Missus, so as he’d do the playin’ instead o’ she.
It wasn’t till pretty near the close o’ the evenin’s entertainment that I got away from that table and moved to Number Two. When I set down there it was I and Mrs. Collins against her husband and Mrs. Sleeper.
“Well, Mrs. Collins,” I says, “I’ll try and hold some good hands for you and maybe I can have two helpin’s o’ the meat when we come to your house.”