“My!” says the Missus. “What stunnin’ gowns!”
“Yes,” I says; “and you could have one just like ’em if you’d take the shade offen the piano lamp at home and cut it down to the right size.”
Round ten o’clock we wandered in the Palm Garden, where the dancin’ had been renewed. The Wife wanted to plunge right in the mazes o’ the foxy trot.
“I’ll take some courage first,” says I. And then was when I found out that it cost you ten cents extra besides the tip to pay for a drink that you already owned in fee simple.
Well, I guess we must of danced about six dances together and had that many quarrels before she was ready to go to bed. And oh, how grand that old hay-pile felt when I finally bounced into it!
The next day we went to the ocean at the legal hour—half past eleven. I never had so much fun in my life. The surf was runnin’ high, I heard ’em say; and I don’t know which I’d rather do, go bathin’ in the ocean at Palm Beach when the surf is runnin’ high, or have a dentist get one o’ my molars ready for a big inlay at a big outlay. Once in a w’ile I managed to not get throwed on my head when a wave hit me. As for swimmin’, you had just as much chance as if you was at State and Madison at the noon hour. And before I’d been in a minute they was enough salt in my different features to keep the Blackstone hotel runnin’ all through the onion season.
The Missus enjoyed it just as much as me. She tried to pretend at first, and when she got floored she’d give a squeal that was supposed to mean heavenly bliss. But after she’d been bruised from head to feet and her hair looked and felt like spinach with French dressin’, and she’d drank all she could hold o’ the Gulf Stream, she didn’t resist none when I drug her in to shore and staggered with her up to our private rooms at five a week per each.