IV

Well, I didn’t give the plot away to the Missus. I just told her I wanted her to know a young friend o’ mine from the office, and that he was just married, and they didn’t know many people or go round much, so I thought it’d be nice to show ’em a good time. And, o’ course, we’d have a little friendly game, because Quinn was crazy about poker.

We decided to ask the Hatches and Tuttles, and the Missus was goin’ to look on from the sidelines, because eight’s too many. But, as luck would have it, the night we picked was the one when Mrs. Tuttle’s maid went out, and she had to stay home and take care o’ little Joe and Millicent. Big Joe, though, said he’d come alone.

Him and the Hatches was already there when Quinn and the best little wife a man ever had blew in. Now I always give people whatever they got comin’. Mrs. Quinn’s a mighty pretty girl. If I’d met her when we was both young and single, I might of fell in love with her myself, provided I hadn’t heard her talk. In the first place, she’s got a voice just like one o’ them air whistles that the flagman keeps pullin’ when they’re backin’ the Limited in. In the second place, all her conversation’s so sweet that when she winds up a sentence you feel like you got to eat a pickle. And besides that, she’s in the last and worst stage o’ giggleitis.

She tee-heed when she was introduced to Tuttle and the Hatches; and while, o’ course, they’s plenty o’ provocation for that, still, it’d be manners to try and keep a straight face. She laughed some more when she set down, and she pretty near had hysterics when Tuttle ast her if she’d lived here long. If she was a theater audience, you could put Frances Starr in this here play, Justice , and call it a minstrel show.

Well, the usual stallin’ was done, and then the Missus says: