I must say I didn't think a whole lot of the hospital end of the game, because it wasn't pleasant. Of course I had no intention to quit in any way, but it sort of depressed me, what with all that sickness going on round me and the talk about wounds and bandages. And so my mind wasn't took off Jim, like it was by the auto work, me having a heart which needed a little bandaging—only that can't be done, of course.
IV
Well, on the way home I cried some more. And well I might. For when I got there had Jim phoned? He had not! Nobody but Goldringer, the manager, and Roscoe, the publicity man, and a few unimportant nuts like that, and some of the newspapers. Ma had stalled them off pretty good by saying it was impossible to disturb me.
And it seems these people hadn't been able to locate Jim anywheres, either. At first that sounded sort of funny to me; but when I come to think it over I realized about his nose, where the alligator had bit him and the doctor had put on the brown stuff, from which he wouldn't naturally care to be seen—only no one could say that it would prevent him using the phone, which I also realized.
Well, after I eat a little liver and bacon, and so on, which Ma had fixed for me, and cried some, which made me feel better again, I started out for drill; which means that now comes the real important part of what happened and the true measure of the tale, as the poet says.
Well, it seems we rookies—and I must pause to mention that I don't like that word rookies; it sounds like something that would get the hook amateur nights. Well, as I was saying, we rookies was told to report at three o'clock for a private drill, all of our very own. But I was on to the fact that the regular members in good standing would be there ahead of us to do well what we was about to do badly. So I thought I would go early and sit out in front, or whatever was the same thing, and try and get a line on how it was done.
Believe you me, there ain't many steps I can't get by seeing them done once; and if I was to of gone up to the Palace and watch Castle, or Rock and White, or any one of them, when I come away I could do the steps they pulled as good as if I had invented them!
Well, this was my idea in going up and seeing the ladies drill. So there I was at the park bright and early on a fine sunny afternoon, with the ladies all in uniform. But I wasn't in any too much time, for I'd no sooner got there than a big roughneck of a feller—a regular U. S. drill sergeant, I found out after—come up and yelled: "Fall in!" Just as rude as any stage director I ever seen! But the ladies didn't seem to mind a bit. They didn't fall into nothing though; they just hustled into line and stood there.
"Ten-shun!" says the feller. And they all stood like a chorus when the stage manager is telling them he is going to quit the show if they don't learn no better, and they're a bunch of fatheads, and he's going to get them fired. In other words, they stood perfectly still.
Well, after that it was something grand, what those ladies did. I will say that when I come down to the park that afternoon I thought maybe I'd see some pretty fair chorus work; you know—formations, and etc. But this was no chorus work, it was soldiering. I never seen anything neater in my life. Was it snappy? It was! And when I thought how that bunch of ladies knew all about autos from soup to nuts, and about bandages, and etc., believe you me—that drill was the finishing touch.