"What are you going to do about William?" That was the question Flo
Dearmore asked of Tommy Watson one afternoon when Tommy should have
been attending strictly to his business as an auctioneer, but was
neglecting it for the business of courtship, which, he declared for the
one hundred and ninety-ninth time, had more charms for him than the
most exciting sale he had ever conducted.
"Well, what about him?" was Tommy's answer.
"Isn't that Scottish though?" said Flo: "question for question."
"You know the old proverb," Tommy said, smilingly, "'don't answer too
quickly, or you'll put your foot in it.'"
"I never heard of it before," she said, "and I don't believe there is
such a proverb."
"It's something like that, anyway," retorted Tommy; "but, coming back
to the question I asked, what about William?"
"I asked it first."
"You're beginning to get your hooks in for the last word rather early,
aren't you?"
"Tommy Watson! make no mistake about me. I'm going to have the first
and last word now and--and----"
"To the end of your married life, I suppose," broke in Tommy with a
sigh so heavy that it shook him.
Flo tapped him on the head with the fingers of one dainty hand.
"You're almost intelligent at times, Tommy Watson," she said, with mock
seriousness.
"Yes," he retorted, "yes; almost intelligent enough to go on the
stage," and then he spent the next ten minutes in explaining that he
had meant to convey no reflections; that his sweetheart was the
dearest, most lovable, and most intelligent person in the world; that
he would never have made, and never could make, an actor: that he was
the biggest bonehead in the boundaries of the City of Toronto, and all
his friends and acquaintances knew it. She made him withdraw the last
assertion, and beg her pardon in his nicest manner for insulting
himself and his wife to be, and then came back to the subject of
William.
"There's promise in the boy," she said, "he'll be a great comedian some
day, if he gets a fair start."
"Yes, and he knows it, too," Tommy commented, "confound the kid.
Sometimes he drives me frantic, but all the time I like him. He hasn't
got the faintest notion of ever being anything but a comedian. He's
almost uncanny. What he doesn't think of hasn't been thought of by
anybody yet, I'll bet. He can't find words, often, to tell what his
thoughts are, and then he falls back on the greatest line of slang I've
ever heard. Only yesterday he said to 'Chuck' Epstein, 'Many's the
time when things all go wrong I've felt like going home and crying,
honest. Then, when I'd get home, there's Pa dead tired, but chirpin'
like a cricket, and Ma tired too, but hustlin' around gettin' supper
for Pa and the kids and me, and Dolly and Pete and the others all
waitin' to see what line I'm going to take. So I gets busy and cuts
up, and, say, maybe we don't have the merry ha ha times, and my Pa says
to me often, he says, "William, make 'em laugh; a feller what can hide
the sores in his own heart," he says, "while he's makin' somebody else
laugh," he says, "he's a winner more ways than one." And it's true,
Mister Epstein.'"
"Yes," said Flo, softly, "it's true."
"But now, here's the situation," Tommy went on. "William's Pa is doing
pretty well now, and he won't stand for any charity game. If the boy
will go back to school, Pa Turnpike will cheerfully consent, but
William won't. He's very stubborn on that point. 'Not for mine,' he
says. 'If I could stick to history and reading lessons, all right, but
the rest of the truck they try to shovel into a boy's head at school
kills me dead. Say, I've come outer the school some days almost scared
to put me feet down for fear they'd slip over the edge of the world,
and I never really know whether the sun goes around the world or the
world around the sun, and often I ain't been sure whether the sun might
hit us, or us hit the sun, and everything bust to pieces.'"
"Well, you'll have to try persuasion on him."
"We're trying it," said Tommy, "and I think we're beginning to see
daylight. It's down to the point now where William comes over and
takes luncheon in my room with Epstein and myself, and he gets an hour
of reading and instruction from the old man then, in addition to the
one in the morning. We arranged that with Whimple, and William walked
right into it. If we could only get him to cut out the slang----"
"What!"
"Well, that's just what Epstein said when I suggested it to him."
"I should think so, Tommy Watson; that boy is a natural born 'slanger.'"
Tommy laughed.
"You're laughing in the wrong place, Tommy--that boy will go on
absorbing slang to the end of his days, unless you're foolish enough to
shame it out of him. By the time he is ready to go on the stage he
will have a stock-in-trade of slang that will be the making of him, for
he is so apt and ready with it. But, tell--no, I'll tell Epstein
myself--to take care that his slang does not mar the rest of his
speech. He must not be allowed to get into the way of just mouthing
slang and nothing else. Does he read well?"
"You should hear him, Flo: it's a treat, and when he gets stuck on a
big word he dives into the dictionary head first, or questions Epstein
until he can say it properly and understand its meaning."
"That is real progress. He's a delightful mimic, too."
"Yes: he takes off Epstein, or Whimple, or myself, to the life."
"The latter must be extremely difficult," said Flo, demurely.
"True--quite true--for there's no doubt I'm a wonderful man, Flo,"
answered Tommy, solemnly: "so inscrutable and impassive--is that the
way to say it--so adept at hiding my inmost thoughts, so----"
"But you needn't squeeze my hand so hard, Tommy, while you pronounce
your eulogy; it isn't an auctioneer's gavel."
"It's a very pretty hand, though," Tommy said with a smile, "a very
pretty hand."
"Are you an impartial judge, Tommy?"
"Well, I can't say I have much experience in regard to the hands of the
fair sex, but I'm willing to bet there are none like yours in the wide
world."
"And you have travelled so much of it."
"Not lately, perhaps, but I once spent four hours in Montreal, 330
miles away; think of it! and half a day in Hamilton--that's all of
forty miles off--and Toronto never looked so sweet to me as it did when
I got back to it. Good old Toronto; it's been kind to me. It has
given me the dearest of all women, and a good business, and--and----"
he kissed her hand and a few minutes later departed.
At a down town corner he ran into William, who was studying with great
interest the baseball bulletins displayed outside of a newspaper
office. William was one of a pretty large crowd that was doing the
same thing. News bulletins seemingly had little attraction for the
majority of them. As Tommy neared him, William remarked to a man in
the crowd, "Gee! wouldn't that jar you?"
"I don't see why: that's a very important piece of news. It isn't
every day the city council decides to spend so much----"
"City council my neck," broke in William, rudely, "what's that got to
do with the score?"
"Score! what score?"
"Oh, gee! I thought I was talking to a baseball fan."
"You thought wrong, young man," retorted the man, sharply. "I've no
patience with such frivolous things."
And then William caught sight of Tommy. "Say," he called out, "what do
you think of that score?"
Tommy, himself an enthusiast, studied it carefully. "Jersey City two,
Toronto one," he said aloud, "and down we go to second place, William."
"Yes; and Jersey City putting us there! Say, that team of ours is
certainly on the pork."
"Oh, they're not doing so badly; we're only a few points down."
"Only? What's the use? Every time they lick the good ones they fall
down when they stack up against the tail-enders; it's rotten."
"Cheer up, William, cheer up! The team will soon be home for another
long series, and then they'll soar."
"Yes," said William, gloomily, "to the bottom."
"You seem to be downhearted; what's the matter?"
"Mister Whimple lost a case to-day."
"Well, lots of lawyers do that. In baseball, or law, or anything else,
William, you've got to lose sometimes. Remember the old saying, 'It's
better to have tried to buck the line, and failed, than never to have
tried at all.'"
"But Mister Whimple's just getting a good start, and he can't afford to
lose cases. It gives him a bad steer with people that's looking for
lawyers in the winning column!"