“Doctors?” says he. “I’ve worn out four sets of tires taking her to doctors. The ordinary doctors won’t do at all it has got to be a specialist of the knee, or the stomach or what you will. And he tells her there ain’t anything there but then she thinks maybe he didn’t look careful enough or maybe I called him on the phone and told him to spare her nervous system so she has to go to another one without telling me—but he always tells me with a bill!”
He says it without any smile and he sits there in the bottomest pit of the dumps so I says, “I suppose you know what is the matter with the poor soul at her time.” “They tell me it’s the change of life,” he says; and I says; “Some ladies in my profession have got a different name they call it the change of wife.”
Then again I feels the start in his fingers and I know he’s looking at my head bowed over his nails. “Is that an old gag,” says he, “or do you make them?”
“You just seen it come out of the mint?” says I.
“Well,” says he, “I’m sorry I don’t own a gold-mine.”
Says I, “There is a plenty of gold-diggers in the manicure profession, and you might of had some of them trimming your cuticle right now if you had of went to some other table. But I am one that makes it plain to a customer that he is the butter.”
“Butter?” says he, and I give him a flash out of the corner of my eye. “Nine hours every day I earns my daily bread in the Elite Beauty Parlors; and then if in the evening some gentleman invites me to dinner, he’s the butter.” So then I seen that we was friends, and I knew I would like that dairy.
But still he was kind of shy and it wasn’t till I was done that he come right down to it, he was lonesome and would like to have me go to dinner with him the next evening but the trouble was he couldn’t afford to go to no swell place on account of having so many people in this town that knew him. But I tells him that two is a company for me and we’ll go to any quiet place that he likes. “You got to be extra careful,” I says, “because Washington is an awful place for gossip.”
“Yes,” says he, “and the truth is I hold an especially prominent position. And so—you see—”
“Yes, I see perfectly,” I says, “I know a gentleman when I meet one and I hope I know how to be a lady. You may count on me to play the game square.”