CHAPTER XVIII
"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!"