"I'm a soldier at sea, all right," says th' Marine. "I'm seasick as an Army Transport ev'ry trip. I was talkin' when you butted in. A sailor like me don't have many look-ins f'r what you might call reefined amusements. Cavite's mostly give up to drill an' cock-fights. I moves we all go to a nigger theayter to-night, where there's sure to be plenty doin', such as it is."
We went, victoriers and all, and Old Trouble must a been howlin' f'r joy to see us comin'. When we got there, there was a big crowd outside, and we got wedged up against one of th' stands where th' girls sell bananas and cigarettes an' such truck. One of th'm—a pretty good-lookin' girl she was, too—smiles at Terry, and he opens up a conversation, and fin'lly he says to me: "'Tis a long time since I've et a hard-boiled egg. I'm goin' to have a couple if they're fresh.
"Frescoes?" he asts, pointin' to the eggs. "Wavoes frescoes?" Fresco means cool in common bamboo Spanish, but he was usin' a private Castilian brand of his own. "Wavoes frescoes?" he asts. "Is the eggs cool?" Th' girl laughs.
"Como helados, chiquito mio," she says, laughin'. "Like ice, my honey-bunch," she says.
"Give me two, then, an' keep th' change," says Terry. "Dos! You're a neat little gu-gu," he says, holdin' up his two fingers.
He broke one of his eggs, and he dropped it quick.
"Ye little merrocker-leather daughter o' sin and shame," he says to th' girl—I ain't quotin' him exact neither—"ye little two-f'r-a-cent bunch o' calicker," he says, mixin' in some other words on the side, "bein' a lady, I can't say what I think of you, but it ain't such a hell uv a much. Don't ye grin at me! I might have et that! If it had on'y knowed enough to peep," he says to us, "it needn't never have got boiled alive. Wavoes frescoes! Damn a country where a pretty girl will lie to you f'r half a cent. I'll keep th' other one till I'm sure hungry," he says, an' slips his other egg into his pocket.
He kep' on mutterin' to himself while he was squeezin' up to th' little window, and a good tight squeeze we had. Y' see, old Ma Trouble[[1]] had c'llected a special crowd f'r the occasion, but we never noticed that. We just hiked ahead, and havin' plenty of money—though little of it was left by that time—we bought a box, and went in.
[[1]] It is interesting to note that Private Casey himself seems half aware that some maliciously mirthful over-power is concerned in his adventures. But why does he feminize it?
Maybe you've never been in a gu-gu theayter. Th' floor is th' ground, an' that's the orchestray. Around that runs a row of boxes without any fronts or backs or tops or sides. Behind them is th' balcony. Well, we swell guys pikes up to our box and starts in to be th' real thing. In one of them theayters you want to keep your hat on till th' curtain rises, an' smoke cigarettes an' look round at th' women. They expects it. That was easy f'r us, an' th' Engineer gets up a two-handed game of eyes with a chocolate-colored dame that begins to look entanglin'. But Terry broke it up.