"But you got to come along and hang around outside while I'm doing it," I insists.
"I'll do anything that either you or Lucy asks," says he. "I'll go the limit."
"That listens fair enough," says I.
So that's how it happens I'm waitin' in the plumber's parlor for Babe Cutler's runaway bride. And say, when she shows up in that zippy sport suit, just in from a long tramp across country, she looks some classy. First off she's inclined to be nervous and jumpy and don't want to talk about Babe at all.
"Oh, he's all right," says she. "I have nothing against him. He—he meant well."
"As bad as that, was he?" says I. "I shall hate to tell him."
"But it wasn't Babe, at all," she insists. "Don't you dare say it was, either. If you must know, it was that awful hotel life. I—I just couldn't stand it."
"Eh?" says I, and I expect I must have been gawpin' some. "Why, I understand you were at one of the swellest——"
"We were," says she. "That was the trouble. And I suppose if I'd known how, I might have had a swell time. But I didn't. I'd had no practice. And say, if you think you can learn to be a regular winter resort person in a few weeks just try it once. I did. I went at it wholesale. All of the things I'd wanted to do and thought I could do, I tackled. It looks like a lot of fun to see those girls start off with their golf clubs. Seems easy to swing a driver and crack out the little white ball. Take it from me, though, it's nothing of the kind. Why, I spent hours and hours out on the practice tee with a grouchy Scotch professional trying my best to hit it right. And I couldn't. At the end of three weeks I was still a duffer. All I'd accumulated were palm callouses and a backache. Yet I knew just how it should be done. I can repeat it now. One—you take your 'stance. Two—you start the head of the club back in a straight line with the left wrist. Three—you come up on your left toe and bend the right knee. And so on. Yet I'd dub the ball only a few yards.
"Then, when that was over, I'd go in and change for my dancing lessons. More one—two—three stuff. And say, some of these new jazz steps are queer, aren't they? I'd about got three or four all mixed up in my head when I'd have to run and jump into my riding habit and go through a different lot of one—two—three motions. And just as I'd lamed myself in a lot of new places there would come the swimming lesson. I thought I could swim some, too. I learned one summer down at Far Rockaway. But it seems that was old stuff. They aren't doing that now. No, it's the double side stroke, the Australian crawl, and a lot more. One, two, three, four, five, six. Legs straight, chin down, and roll on the three. And if you dream it's a pleasure to have a big husk of an instructor pump your arms back and forth for an hour, and say sarcastic things to you when you get mixed, with a whole gallery of fat old women and grinning old sports looking on—Well, I'm tellin' you it's fierce. Ab-so-lutely. It was the swimming lesson that finished me. Especially the counting. 'Why, Lucy Snell, you poor prune,' says I to myself, 'you're not having a good time. You're back in school, second grade, and the dunce of the class.' That's what I was, too. A flat failure. And when I got to thinking of how Babe would take it when he found out—Well, it got on my nerves so that I simply made a run for home. There! You can tell him all about it, and I suppose he'll never want to see or hear of me again."