YOU SHOULD WORRY SAYS JOHN HENRY
by
GEORGE V. HOBART
Illustrations by Edward Carey
G. W. Dillingham Company
Publishers New York
Copyright, 1914, by
G. W. Dillingham Company
All rights reserved
The author reserves all stage rights, which includes moving pictures.
Any infringement of copyright will be dealt with according to law.
_You Should Worry_
Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co. New York
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. You Should Worry About a Tango Lesson 5
II. You Should Worry About an Automobile 28
III. You Should Worry About Dieting 45
IV. You Should Worry About Getting a Goat 64
V. You Should Worry About Being in Love 78
VI. You Should Worry About Snap-Shots 97
VII. You Should Worry About the Servants 108
VIII. You Should Worry About Auction Bridge 130
IX. You Should Worry About Getting the Grip 142
X. You Should Worry About a Musical Evening 158
YOU SHOULD WORRY
CHAPTER I
YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT A TANGO LESSON
The idea originated with Bunch Jefferson. You can always count on Bunch
having a few freak ideas in the belfry where he keeps his butterflies.
Bunch and his wife, Alice, live out in Westchester County, about half a
mile from Uncle Peter's bungalow, where friend wife and I are spending
the winter.
The fact that Uncle Peter and Aunt Martha had decided to give us a party
was the inspiration for Bunch's brilliant idea.
"Listen, John," he Macchiavellied; "not one of this push out here knows
a thing about the Tango. Most of them have a foolish idea that it's a
wicked institution invented by the devil, who sold his patent rights to
the Evil-Doers' Association. Now, I'll tell you what we'll do, John:
we'll put them wise. We'll take about two lessons from a good instructor
in town and on the night of the party we'll make the hit of our lives
teaching them all to Tango--are you James to the possibilities?"
"It listens like a good spiel," I agreed; "but will a couple of lessons
be enough for us?"
"Sure," he came back; "we're not a couple of Patsys with the pumps! We
can learn enough in two lessons to make good in this Boob community.
Why, we'll start a Tango craze out here that will put life and ginger in
the whole outfit and presently they'll be putting up statues in our
honor."
Well, to make a long story lose its cunning, we made arrangements next
day with Ikey Schwartz, Dancing Instructor, to explain the mysteries of
this modern home-wrecking proposition known as the Tango, and paid him
in advance the sum of $100.
It seemed to me that a hundred iron men in advance was a nifty little
price for two lessons, but Bunch assured me the price was reasonable on
account of the prevalence of rich scholars willing to divide their
patrimony with anybody who could teach their feet to behave in time to
the music.
We made an appointment to meet Ikey at his "studio" for our first lesson
the following afternoon. Then we hiked for home on the 4.14, well
pleased with our investment and its promise of golden returns.
That night Bunch and Alice were over to our place for dinner. After
dinner Bunch and I sat down by the log fire in the Dutch room, filled
our faces with Havana panatellas, and proceeded to enjoy life in
silence.
Into the next room came Alice and Peaches and sat down for their usual
cackle.
Bunch and I started from our reveries when we heard Alice say to
Peaches, "You don't know what a source of comfort it has been to me to
realize that Bunch doesn't know a blessed thing about the Tango or any
of those hatefully intimate new dances!"
"The same with me, Alice," friend wife chirped in. "I believe if John
were to suddenly display the ability to dance the Tango I'd be
broken-hearted. Naturally, I'd know that he must have learned it with a
wicked companion in some lawless cabaret. And if he frequented cabarets
without my knowledge--oh, Alice, what _would_ I do?"
I looked at Bunch, he looked at me, and then we both looked out the
window.
"For my part," Alice went on, "I trust Bunch so implicitly that I don't
even question his motive when he telephones me he has to take dinner in
town with a prospective real estate customer."
"And I know enough of human nature," Peaches gurgled, "to be sure that
if either one of them could Tango he would be crazy to show off at home.
I think we're very lucky, both of us, to have such steady-going
husbands, don't you, Alice?"
At this point Aunt Martha buzzed into the other room and the cackle took
on another complexion.
In the meantime Bunch and I had passed away.
"It's cold turkey," I whispered.
"I've been in the refrigerator for ten minutes and I'm chilled to the
bone," Bunch whispered back.
"Can we get our coin away from Ikey?" I asked.
"We can try," Bunch sneezed.
The next afternoon we had Ikey Schwartz for luncheon with us at the St.
Astorbilt. The idea being to dazzle him and get a few of the iron men
back.
"Leave everything to me," Bunch growled as we shaved our hats and
Indian-filed to a trough.
"A quart of Happysuds," Bunch ordered. "How about it, Ikey?"
Ikey flashed a grin and tried to swallow his palate, so it wouldn't
interfere with the wet spell suggested by Bunch.
Ikey belonged to the "dis, dose and dem" push.
Every long sentence he uttered was full of splintered grammar.
Every time Ikey opened his word-chest the King's English screamed for
help, and literature got a kick in the slats.
He was short and thin, but it was a deceptive thinness. His capacity for
storing away free liquids was awe-inspiring and a sin.
I think Ikey must have been hollow from the neck to the ankles, with
emergency bulkheads in both feet.
His nose was shaped like a quarter to six o'clock. It began in the
middle and rushed both ways as hard as it could. One end of it ducked
into his forehead and never did come out.
His interior was sponge-lined, and when the bartenders began to send
them in fast, Ikey would lower an asbestos curtain to keep the fumes
away from his brain.
Nobody ever saw Ikey at high tide.
There was surely something wrong with Ikey's switchboard, because he
could wrap his system around more Indian laughing-juice without getting
lit up than any other man in the world.
But Ikey was the compliments of the season, all right, all right.
Ikey had spent most of his life being a Bookmaker, and when the racing
game went out of fashion he sat down and tried to think what else he
could do. Nothing occurred to him until one day he discovered that he
could push his feet around in time to music, so he became a dancing
instructor and could clean up $1,000 per day if the bartenders didn't
beckon too hard.
The luncheon had been ordered and Bunch was just about to switch the
conversation around to the subject of rebates when suddenly his eyes
took on the appearance of saucers, and tapping me on the arm he gasped,
"Look!"
I looked, and beheld Peaches, Alice and Aunt Martha sailing over in our
direction.
With a whispered admonition to Bunch to keep Ikey still, I went forward
to meet friend wife, her aunt and Alice.
They were as much surprised as I was.
"It was such a delightful day that Aunt Martha couldn't resist the
temptation to do a little shopping," Peaches rattled on; "and then we
decided to come here for a bit of luncheon--hello, Bunch! I'm _so_ glad
to see you! John, hadn't we better take another table so that your
friendly conference may not be interrupted?"
I hastened to assure Peaches that it wasn't a conference at all. We had
met Mr. Schwartz quite by accident. Then I introduced Ikey to the
ladies.
He got up and did something that was supposed to be a bow, but you
couldn't tell whether he was tying his shoe or coming down a stepladder.
When Ikey tried to bend a Society double he looked like one of the
pictures that goes with a rubber exerciser, price 75 cents.
After they had ordered club sandwiches and coffee I explained to Peaches
and the others that Mr. Schwartz was a real estate dealer. Ikey began to
swell up at once.
"Bunch and I are going in a little deal with Mr. Schwartz," I explained.
"He knows the real estate business backwards. Mr. Schwartz has a fad
for collecting apartment houses. He owns the largest assortment of
People Coops in the city. All the modern improvements, too. Hot and cold
windows, running gas and noiseless janitors. Mr. Schwartz is the
inventor of the idea of having two baths in every apartment so that the
lessee will have less excuse for not being water broke."
Ikey never cracked a smile.
"In Mr. Schwartz's apartment houses," I continued, while Bunch kicked my
shins under the table, "you will find self-freezing refrigerators and
self-leaving servants. All the rooms are light rooms, when you light the
gas. Two of his houses overlook the Park and all of them overlook the
building laws. The floors are made of concrete so that if you want to
bring a horse in the parlor you can do so without kicking off the
plaster in the flat below. Every room has folding doors, and when the
water pipes burst the janitor has folding arms."
"Quit your joshing, John! you'll embarrass Mr. Schwartz," laughed Bunch
somewhat nervously, but Ikey's grin never flickered.
"Is Mr. Schwartz deaf and dumb?" Peaches whispered.
"Intermittently so," I whispered back; "sometimes for hours at a time he
cannot speak a word and can hear only the loudest tones."
Aunt Martha heard my comment on Ikey's infirmity and was about to
become intensely sympathetic and tell him how her brother's wife was
cured when Bunch interrupted loudly by asking after Uncle Peter's
health.
"Never better," answered Aunt Martha. "He has spent all the morning
arranging the program of dancing for our little party. He insists upon
having the Virginia Reel, the old-fashioned waltz, the Polka and the
Lancers. Uncle Peter has a perfect horror of these modern dances and
Peaches and Alice and I share it with him." Then she turned to Ikey:
"Don't you think these modern dances are perfectly disgusting?"
Poor Ikey looked reproachfully at the old lady a second, then with
gathering astonishment he slid silently off the chair and struck the
floor with a bump.
Aunt Martha was so rattled over this unexpected effort on Mr. Schwartz's
part that she upset her coffee and Ikey got most of it in the back of
the neck.
When peace was finally restored the old lady came to the surface with an
envelope which had been lying on the table near her plate.
"Is this your letter, John?" she asked, and then, arranging her glasses,
read with great deliberation, "Mr. I. Schwartz, Tango Teacher, care of
Kumearly and Staylates' Cabaret, New York."
Peaches and Alice went into the ice business right away quick.
Aunt Martha, in pained surprise, looked at me and then at Bunch, and
finally focused a steady beam of interrogation upon the countenance of
Mr. Schwartz.
Ikey never whimpered.
Then Bunch took the letter from the open-eyed Aunt Martha and leaped to
the rescue while I came out of the trance slowly.
"It's too bad Mr. Schwartz forgot his ear trumpet," Bunch said quickly,
and Ikey was wise to the tip in a minute.
Peaches sniffed suspiciously, and I knew she had the gloves on.
"Mr. Schwartz's affliction is terrible," she said with a chill in every
word. "How did you converse with him before our arrival?"
"Oh! he understands the lip language and can talk back on his fingers,"
I hastened to explain, looking hard at Ikey, whose masklike face gave no
token that he understood what was going on.
"I thought I understood you to say Mr. Schwartz is a real estate
dealer!" Peaches continued, while the thermometer went lower and lower.
"So he is," I replied.
"Then why does his correspondent address him as a Tango Teacher?" friend
wife said slowly, and I could hear the icebergs grinding each other all
around me.
"I think I can explain that," Bunch put in quietly. Then with the utmost
deliberation he looked Ikey in the eye and said, "Mr. Schwartz, it's
really none of my business, but would you mind telling me why you, a
real estate dealer, should have a letter in your possession which is
addressed to you as a Tango Teacher? Answer me on your fingers."
[Illustration]
Ikey delivered the goods.
In a minute he had both paws working overtime and such a knuckle
twisting no mortal man ever indulged in before.
"He says," Bunch began to interpret, "that the letter is not his. It is
intended for Isadore Schwartz, a wicked cousin of his who is a victim of
the cabaret habit. Mr. Schwartz is now complaining bitterly with his
fingers because his letters and those intended for his renegade cousin
become mixed almost every day. These mistakes are made because the
initials are identical. He also says that--he--hopes--the--presence--
of--this--particular--letter--in--his--possession--does--not--offend--
the--ladies--because--while--it--is--addressed--to--a--tango-teacher--
the--contents--are--quite--harmless--being--but--a--small--bill--from--
the--dentist."
Ikey's fingers kept on working nervously, as though he felt it his duty
to wear them out, and the perspiration rolled off poor Bunch's forehead.
"Tell him to cease firing," I said to Bunch; "he'll sprain his fingers
and lose his voice."
Ikey doubled up all his eight fingers and two thumbs in one final shout
and subsided.
"I'm afraid we'll miss the 5.18 train if we don't hurry," said Peaches,
and I could see that the storm was over, although she still glanced
suspiciously at poor Ikey.
"And, Bunch, you and John can come home with us now, can't you?" Alice
asked as they started to float for the door.
Then Ikey cut in as we started to follow the family parade, "I'm hep to
the situation. It's a cutey, take it from little Ikey. I'll have to
charge you $8 for the sudden attack of deafness; then there's $19 for
hardships sustained by my finger joints while conversing. The rest of
the 100 iron men I'm going to keep as a souvenir of two good-natured
ginks who wouldn't know what to do with a Tango if they had one."
As we pulled out of the Mayonnaise Mansion I looked back at Ikey to
thank him with a farewell nod.
He was halfway under the table, holding both hands to his sides and
making funny faces at the carpet.