Ring W. Lardner

“ So Kate asked him how people could stand it.
"They don't," he says. "All the ones that's got a piece of change ducks out somewheres where they can get the air."
"Where do they go?" Katie asked him.
"Well," he says, "the most of my pals goes to Newport or Maine or up in the Adirondacks. But of course them places is out of most people's reach. If I was you folks I'd go over on Long Island somewheres and either take a cottage or live in one of them good hotels." ”

“ He knows the game, but he don't know enough to keep still. I don't mind people talking w'ile the cards is being dealt, but once the hands is picked up they ought to be absolute silence. Last night I lost about three hundred and seventy dollars just because he talked at the wrong time."
"Three hundred and seventy dollars!" said Kate. "My, you must play for big stakes!"
"Yes, we do," says Lady Perkins; "and when a person is playing for sums like that it ain't no time to trifle, especially when you're playing against an expert like Mrs. Snell."
"The game must be awfully exciting," said Ella. ”

“ Kate acted like she was bored, and she didn't have nothing to say after she'd told them, w'ile somebody was dealing, that she was going to have an areoplane ride in the morning. Finally our side begin to lose, and lose by big scores. They was one time when they was about sixteen hundred points to the bad. Lady Perkins didn't seem to be enjoying herself and when Ella addressed a couple of remarks to her the cat had her tongue. ”

“ They even got a barber and a valet, but you can't get a shave w'ile he's pressing your clothes, so it's pretty near impossible for a man to look their best at the same time.
Well, the second day we was there I bought me a deck of cards and got so good at solitary that pretty soon I could play fifty games between breakfast and lunch and a hundred from then till suppertime. During the first week Ella and Kate got on friendly terms with over a half a dozen people—the head waiter, our waitress, some of the clerks and the manager and the two telephone gals. ”

“ Sunday mornings the husbands and bachelors gets up earlier than usual to go to their real business, which is golf. The women-folks are in full possession of the hotel till Sunday night supper and wives and husbands don't see one another all day long, but it don't seem as long as if they did. ”

“ I don't know how I covered them two blocks, but I do know that when I reeled into the Decker my hands and legs was was paralyzed and Ella had to do the registering.
Was you ever out there? Well, I s'pose it's what you might call a family hotel, and a good many of the guests belongs to the cay-nine family. A few of the couples that can't afford dogs has got children, and you're always tripping over one or the other. They's a dining room for the grown-ups and another one for the kids, w'ile the dogs and their nurses eats in the grillroom à la carte. ”

“ V THE following morning I and the two gals was down on the porch bright and early and in a few minutes, sure enough, along come Lady Perkins, bringing the menagerie back from the parade. She turned them over to their nurse and joined us. She said that Martha, the nurse, had used the rash poison and it had made a kind of a lather on the dogs' necks and she didn't know whether to wash it off or not, but it had dried up in the sun. She asked me how many times a day the dope should ought to be put on, and I told her before every meal and at bedtime. ”

“ It come out that he had invented some new kind of an areoplane and had came to demonstrate it to the Williams Company. The company—Palmer Williams and his brother, you know—they've got their flying field a couple miles from the hotel. Well, a guy with nerve enough to go up in one of them things certainly ain't going to hesitate about speaking to a strange gal when he likes their looks. So this Codd baby had give himself an introduction to my Mrs. and Kate, and I guess they hadn't sprained an ankle running away from him.
Of course Ella wanted to know how I'd came out with Lady Perkins. ”

“ It's located right next to the dogs' dormitories, and they's a good deal of rivalry between the dogs and the souses to see who can make the most noise nights. They's also a ballroom and a couple card rooms and a kind of a summer parlor where the folks sets round in the evening and listen to a three-piece orchestra that don't know they's been any music wrote since Poets and Peasants. The men get up about eight o'clock and go down to New York to Business. They don't never go to work. ”

“ I says. "I and the nobility won't have our little romance knocked for a gool by a couple of country gals that can't get on speaking terms with nobody but the chambermaid."
"But they'll be other people there," says Kate. "She can't play cards alone." ”

“ It got carried up here from Peru some way another."
"Oh, it's contagious, then!" says Lady Perkins.
"Worse than measles or lockjaw," says I. "You take a dog that's been in the same house with a dog that's got blanny, and it's a miracle if they don't all get it."
She asked me if I'd had my dogs in the hotel.
"Only one day," I says, "the first day we come, about a week ago. As soon as I seen what was the matter with them, I took them over to Haverton in a sanitary truck."
"Was they mingling with the other dogs here?" she says. ”

“ I always wondered what the boys in the Army was talking about when they said they eat chow."
"They probably meant chowchow," says the Mrs. "They wouldn't of had these kind of chows, because in the first place, who would eat a dog, and besides these kind costs too much." ”

“ She's sure to stop and inquire about my kennel. And don't forget, w'ile she's talking, that we got a couple of yaphounds that's suffering from blanny, and if she asks any questions let me do the answering, as I can think a lot quicker. You better tell Kate the secret, too, before she messes everything up, according to custom."
Then I and the Mrs. come downstairs and her and Katie went out to listen to the music w'ile I beat it to the red card room. I give Perkie the bottle of rash poison and she thanked me and said she would have the dogs' governess slap some of it onto them in the morning. ”

“ I don't s'pose she knows what she's saying when she says any one of them things, but she's one of these here gals that can't bear to see a conversation die out and thinks it's her place to come through with a wise crack whenever they's a vacuum. ”

“ But they wasn't no way to escape from dressing up and escorting the two gals into the grand ballroom and then setting there with them.
The dance was a knock-out. Outside of Ella and Kate and the aviator and myself, they was three couple. The Snells was there and so was Doctor Platt. He had a gal with him that looked like she might be his mother with his kid sister's clothes on. Then they was a pair of young shimmy shakers that ought to of been give their bottle and tucked in the hay at six p. m. A corn wouldn't of bothered them the way they danced ”

“ VII LADY PERKINS got part of her hope. The areoplane fell all right, but only a couple of miles instead of a million feet. They say that they was a defect or something in poor Codd's engine. Anyway, he done an involuntary nose dive. Him and his invention was spilled all over Long Island. But Katie had been awake all night with the hysterics and Ella hadn't managed to get her to sleep till nine a. m. So when Codd had called for her Ella'd told him that Sis would go some other day. Can you beat it? ”

“ Well, this got a laugh from Lady Perkins and the other dude, but it didn't go very big with Doc or Mrs. Snell. W'ile Doc was trying to figure out a come-back I said I must go and look after my womenfolks. So I told the party I was glad to of met them and walked out.
I found Ella and Katie in the summer parlor, and they wasn't alone. A nice-looking young fella named Codd was setting alongside of them, and after we was introduced Ella leaned over and w'ispered to me that he was Bob Codd, the famous aviator. ”