"And now one of them is loose in my room!" I says, "which is the general result of charity which, as the poet says, had ought to begin at home," I says. "And you know, Ma, how I feel about snakes. There's nobody in the psycopathic ward got anything on me. If only they had even a few feet instead of so many yards, I wouldn't mind them so much."
"Well, now Mary, I'm real sorry," says Ma. "But not half so sorry as Madame Estelle will be if anything happens to Maude! I'm real fond of the little beauty myself, and if you had been with a circus all the years I was, you would understand her better!"
Well, believe you me, it wasn't a lack of understanding with me, it was a religious conviction, and why not, for hadn't them beasts made trouble beginning with the original eviction of undesirable tenants, and was I to think it likely that our own janitor would be any more lenient if Maude was to get, say, as far as the elevator? Keeping snakes never got a tenant in right yet and loose ones might set the first of May forward as many months as was necessary. Not to mention my own personal feelings in the matter, which it's a fact I once broke a contract on the Small-Time years ago because a snake-charmer come off just as I was going on and I used to meet her and them in the wings every time.
Well, anyways, I will say it for Ma, she certainly turned in and helped me make a thorough search for Maude, which was going some for a lady of her figure. Looking for a vanished snake in a apartment means considerable gymnastics, because nothing can be overlooked with safety, and I didn't want that parlor-eel slipping anything over on me—especially her cold stomach in the middle of the night across my face, for instance.
So I and Ma looked under all the furniture and in the pedalcase of the pianola and in the vases and behind the steam radiators, back of the big gold clock, inside the victrola, under the rugs, back of the pictures on the wall and every place:—but no Maude. Finally we even took a look out in the hall, although we knew nobody had opened the front door, and after that we opened the wall safe where we keep our diamonds in a stocking, this being a compromise between Ma's habits and my common-sense. And then we had a peep into the ice-box where Ma found a saucer of pudding which she had someways overlooked at supper but no snake.
And after we had felt under the bath-tub with my best lavender umbrella which what with the limousine it was the first use I ever had for it, and then taken a forlorn hope into the soiled-clothes hamper, we give it up, and sat down with ruined georgette blouses and perfectly wild looking hair and all heated up like a couple of wrestlers. Any one coming in then would of thought we had been indulging in a family discussion of some kind, and for a matter of that it's the truth. I said a few raw remarks about the kind of a home she run for me and I working as hard as cider to keep it and now she left snakes around, Gawd knows where, and how would a artist like myself get the rest to do justice to my work on the bomb-explosion scene in the last reel of "Bosh or Bolshevik?" which I was going to be shot in only the next day, and if she had to support me instead of I her, she would have a right to leave any animals or minerals around she chose, but this was my flat and although Gawd knew she was welcome, pretty soon we would have none if I was to be made a nervous wreck out of instead of the biggest nerve in pictures. Yes, I said that and a lot more pretty mean stuff as only a daughter can—for even with my refinement I am but a mere human after all, and under the glittering success of my career is several common human failings and at times I act no different from any less well-known female in the bosom of my family.
So I had the last word and Ma was in wrong and went to get lunch without a come-back out of her. Alas! Had I but canned that foolish chatter of mine! But how could I know she was going to act like she done later because of it? You can't remember forwards and if a person could, it's ten to one they'd quit before they was off the bottle and go back to Heaven whence they come, life being so full of mistakes you could of avoided if only you had done something different from what you did!
II
Well, anyways, Ma went back to the kitchen to fix up a little snack of waffles and honey and poached eggs on hash and cream-cake and strawberries with a cup of cocoa and whipped cream for a light lunch, her lunches being light about the way a "light" motor truck is, and I went back to my joint contract and was so mad I concluded to write into it not alone expenses and Rosco but a cottage or bungaloo, as it is called in Los Angeles, while out there. With which I wrote a refined but firm letter to Goldringer, saying this was my final word on the matter and spoke also for Jim. Then I enclosed the contract and Ma called out the cocoa was getting cold and so I stamped and put it in the hall-slot which I never have a feeling any letter going down it is headed for anybody except maybe the devil, and not even him unless it don't get stuck on the way. And then I ate, though not with much appetite, what with expecting any moment to see Maude crawl out from some place, and Ma being quiet to a extent not to be fully accounted for by three plates of waffles. It wasn't natural in her, that quiet, but I remembered the doughnuts and laid it to the sequence. Still I tried to get her to talk, as talking, if about herself, generally cheers her quite a lot.