“Esmeralda! Darling! Wakeup! That ‘Purity League’ sleuth has found us! He is sure to be one of those ‘ex-convict’ crooks working on a percentage for what he can get, and, if he catches you out here in public in that costume, he will rush you into one of his ‘kangaroo’ courts, and ‘railroad’ you into jail! Wake up! Es——”
The sharp angle of Mary Jane’s bony knee-cap, adeptly from practice and forcibly by instinct, projected into my left-hand lower short-ribs, finally aroused me; and, as if it were an echo of my dream, I distinctly heard the dulcet tones of her gentle voice in my ear, shouting:
“Wake up you, John Henry! You’re snoring like a horse! Haven’t I told you times enough never to sleep on your back? Turn over on your right side! And you’ve been talking something awful in your sleep, too! Who’s this ‘darling Esmeralda,’ anyway? If I catch her monkeying with you, I’ll scratch her eyes out! None of your lies, now! There wasn’t any ‘Esmeralda’ in that picture-play we saw tonight, so you better not try to spring anything of that sort on me! Why don’t you——”
But, peeved by my rude awakening, and not feeling well anyway, I stopped the verbal torrent by breaking in.
“If you can’t be satisfied with nagging at me about nothing all day, but you must go waking me up in the middle of the night to keep it up, I’ll move into the spare room, and let you sleep by yourself,” I threatened. “Besides,” I added, “you’ve got me crowded clear off onto the bedrail, and nobody could sleep like that, anyway.”
Mary Jane, my wife, was contrite and very humble at once, which shows that I know how to manage her properly when I really want to.
“I didn’t wake you up to nag at you, John,” she said penitently, as she snuggled up to me and reached out her hand to caress me. “But that stuff of yours down in the cellar has been popping-off to beat the band for an hour, and I just know that you’ll lose the whole batch if you don’t tend to it right away. I told you that you were bottling it too soon, but it never does any good for me to say anything. You’ll just——”
“Well, if it’s going to ‘pop,’ it’s going to and that’s all there is to it,” I broke in petulantly. “If you think you know so much more about it than I do, you can just make the next batch yourself and see if you can do any better. Now move over and give me enough of the bed to lie comfortably in, and give me a chance to get a little sleep.”
And, as my “better-half” squirmed back to her own side of the bed, I turned over upon my right side and slept fairly well for the rest of the night.