So now the whole crowd comes dashin’ out because they’s been a report that the place is infested with the hoof and mouth disease. They tell Don about it, but he’s all excited over Carmen dyin’. He’s delirious and gets himself mixed up with a Irish policeman.
“I yield me prisoner,” he says.
Then the house doctor says the curtain’s got to come down to prevent the epidemic from spreadin’ to the audience. So the show’s over and the company’s quarantined.
Well, Hatch was out all durin’ the second act and part o’ the third, and when he finally come back he didn’t have to tell nobody where he’d been. And he dozed off the minute he hit his seat. I was for lettin’ him sleep so’s the rest o’ the audience’d think we had one o’ the op’ra bass singers in our party. But Mrs. Hatch wasn’t lookin’ for no publicity, on account of her costume, so she reached over and prodded him with a hatpin every time he begin a new aria.
Goin’ out, I says to him:
“How’d you like it?”
“Pretty good,” he says, “only they was too much gin in the last one.”
“I mean the op’ra,” I says.
“Don’t ask him!” says Mrs. Hatch. “He didn’t hear half of it and he didn’t understand none of it.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” says I. “Jim here ain’t no boob, and they wasn’t nothin’ hard about it to understand.”
“Not if you know the plot,” says Mrs. Hatch.
“And somethin’ about music,” says my Missus.