“Not after the way you’ve acted,” I says. “You’ve got to learn one thing, and that is that when I tell you to do something, you’ve got it to do. You sign your name on that line.”
She took the pen, but instead of signing it she just stood there with her head bent and the pen shaking in her hand. Just like her mother. “Oh, God,” she says, “oh, God.”
“Yes,” I says, “That’s one thing you’ll have to learn if you never learn anything else. Sign it now, and get on out of here.”
She signed it. “Where’s the money?” she says. I took the order and blotted it and put it in my pocket. Then I gave her the ten dollars.
“Now you go on back to school this afternoon, you hear?” I says. She didn’t answer. She crumpled the bill up in her hand like it was a rag or something and went on out the front door just as Earl came in. A customer came in with him and they stopped up front. I gathered up the things and put on my hat and went up front.
“Been much busy?” Earl says.
“Not much,” I says. He looked out the door.
“That your car over yonder?” he says. “Better not try to go out home to dinner. We’ll likely have another rush just before the show opens. Get you a lunch at Rogers’ and put a ticker in the drawer.”
“Much obliged,” I says. “I can still manage to feed myself, I reckon.”
And right there he’d stay, watching that door like a hawk until I came through it again. Well, he’d just have to watch it for a while; I was doing the best I could. The time before I says that’s the last one now; you’ll have to remember to get some more right away. But who can remember anything in all this hurrah. And now this damn show had to come here the one day I’d have to hunt all over town for a blank check, besides all the other things I had to do to keep the house running, and Earl watching the door like a hawk.