THE VAUDEVILLE SHOW.
So close was the affiliation between Betty and Moses that exactly
three-quarters of an hour after her departure with Miss Gordon for
Calgary the impetuous youth was at the rancher’s home trying to
inveigle him into a conspiracy to follow the holiday-makers to that
city of dazzling attractions.
Nothing loth to keep the distance between himself and Nell at a
minimum, Howard Eliot entered with zest into the boy’s plans.
“Mar said she’d like to see the sights too onct again,” said Moses,
watching with the air of an investigator the wart on his hand grow
pale as he punched it with his finger, “It seemed so lonesome-like
soon as Betty an’ Miss Gordon left, Mar says, says she, ‘Let’s go plum
to Calgary ourselves’.” This diplomatic stroke crowned Moses’
arguments and his case was won.
As Mrs. Wopp adjusted her bonnet before leaving the house, she gave
minute instructions to Mr. Wopp.
“You’d think this here day’s trip to Calgary was a journey to
Jeroosalem,” he complained, all his slips of paper used up in jottings
to remind him of duties imposed.
“Well I only go ’way about onct in a blue moon,” declared Mrs. Wopp,
“an’ I feel so unsartin ’bout everything. Here we are a pack of
Gadarene swine goin’ orff to a great city to eat husks I s’pose like
the prodigal son. Never mind Ebenezer we’ll come back right glad I’ll
bet to the fatted calf.” She pinched his ear in an elephantine
playfulness as though he might be the fatted calf himself.
Howard Eliot guided his charges through the mazes of the city to a
restaurant. Moses with the perennial appetite of fourteen ate silently
and steadily, not omitting one item on the menu. He gorged.
Mrs. Wopp’s bonnet with its imitation osprey looked as though adorned
with fragments of barbed-wire. Her jet earrings seemed entirely
superfluous as the lobes of her generous ears glowed like rubies.
Howard sat back in his chair and thought of the possibilities of
seeing Nell. He reflected that they were as good as engaged. Mrs. Wopp
had given her diagnosis of the case enigmatically, perhaps, but with a
degree of accuracy denoting keen observation on the evening of his
last visit at the Wopp household. For fully a fraction of a minute
Nell had let him hold her hand, and then her face all dimpling had
turned to say good-night. He was rehearsing what he should say next
time she dimpled so irresistibly and he breathed anathemas on his
asinine conduct in being so shy and tardy. He was brought to the
immediate present by Moses who was regarding an ice-cream soda with
suspicion.
“This froth looks like soapsuds,” he complained.
“Soapsuds is Moses’ strong weakness,” commented Mrs. Wopp, laughing
till her fat shoulders quaked perilously.
To stay the cloud that began to gather over Moses’ brow, Howard
suggested going to see a vaudeville show.
“Oh Mar,” asked Moses as they passed a brilliantly colored and
illuminated poster, “Is them the actor people?”
“Them’s thum,” was the sophisticated answer.
Fate led the trio to the theatre where Mr. Zalhambra was playing.
Howard took his friends to a box and no sooner were they seated than
he espied Nell and Betty.
The orchestra were tuning up, that delightful tilting at the notes
that precedes the overture. To Moses were revealed such vistaed
glimpses of trees and mountains and rivers as his young eyes had never
seen. He saw nothing but the gorgeous scenery and the blaze of lights,
and heard nothing but the booming of the drum in the overture. Then
becoming more used to the glare and clamor, he cocked one eye aloft
and saw youths of his own age eating peanuts in the gallery. It made
his mouth water. He surveyed the obnoxious offenders however with the
nonchalance of one who has already dined sumptuously. Outwardly Moses
was an overgrown, freckle-faced, well-fed boy of commonplace
propensities; inwardly he was a battery fully charged.
The first act over, a troop of black-faced comedians occupied the
stage.
“Jist look at that black man’s chest swellin’ in an’ out like an
accorjun,” remarked Mrs. Wopp highly entertained with the sight. Moses
leaned over till he was in danger of capsizing. His eager look trailed
off into a point of vacuity when the performers left the stage.
Bewilderment had left his eyes incapable of properly focussing.
Suddenly he caught sight of Betty and he could hardly repress an
exclamation of joy as he pointed her out to his mother.
“Don’t Betty look jist too sweet,” she murmured when she had finally
located the child, “Her hair looks as ef she had got tangled up in the
milky way an’ there was nothin’ on it but star-dust.”
The pianist walked on the stage as the eyes of Mrs. Wopp and Moses
rested on Betty. Howard Eliot had not taken his gaze from Nell Gordon
expecting momentarily to catch her glance and to be rewarded by a
smile. A smile radiated her fair face, but alas! It was not for him.
As the program went on Moses finally caught the eye of his little
sister. The joyful news was passed on and Nell looked up, but it was a
disconcertingly cold look that returned her inquiring gaze at Howard.
So frigid was his expression that she did not attempt to turn her head
in that direction again. From time to time Betty turned to wave her
hand thereby causing much merriment among those who watched her
childish enjoyment.
When the program was over Moses noticed enviously that Betty was so
close to the orchestra that her ear was almost in the trombone.
“Wisht I hed a chance to holler into one of them brass dinner-horns,
too,” he grumbled.
Mrs. Newman and Nell waited after the show for the unique trio that
had occupied the box but they were nowhere to be seen. Howard Eliot
had whisked his companions off under a pretext of urgent business.
The next day was spent in sight seeing but visions of neglected
poultry and cows haunted the anxious housewife, and notwithstanding
the expostulations of Moses they started home that evening.
Mrs. Wopp surmised from the dejected appearance of the young rancher,
coupled with the smiles over the footlights which she had observed
with rising wrath, that trouble was brewing, and she whispered audibly
to herself, “A musician’s orl right on a pianner stool, but when it
comes to gittin’ up in the mornin’ an’ choppin’ wood to bile the
kettle give me a farmer.” Her cogitations became louder. “I s’pose he
thinks cos he has a percession of carpital letters arter his name he
can git anyone fer the arskin’. When he smiled so at our Miss Gordon I
could of slain him with the jawrbone of an arss.” In her championship
of Howard’s interests, Mrs. Wopp became an ardent villifier of the
pianist and she administered an oral castigation with feminine vigor.
“That man Zalhambone’s playin’ rasped all up an’ down my spine,” she
criticized. Then harking back to thrills she really had felt despite
her prejudice, she admitted grudgingly, “My, but his han’s did fly
over them keys permiscuous-like.”
“He smiles sich a toothy grin,” commented Moses.
“Put a nose an’ eyes over his own planner an’ you’d think there’s the
man hisself,” flung back Mrs. Wopp.
Presently Moses’ thoughts returned to the meals provided by the
restaurants of Calgary, and he decided it would be a good pastime for
some rainy day to relate it all to Betty especially about the “little
minners suffercated in rice an’ tryin’ to climb onto rafts of
lemon-slices.”
Howard Eliot having left his charges safely at home went to his lonely
ranch haunted by rebellious thoughts which Mrs. Wopp would have
translated, “Here endeth my knowledge of the female speeshie.”