Side-stepping with Shorty Part 26

Was that a josh, or what? Anyway, I figures I'm gettin' off easy, for there was a lot more of that blamed book he might have pumped into me if I hadn't ducked.

"Never again!" says I to myself. "Next time I gets curious I'll keep my mouth shut."

I wa'n't takin' any chances of his holdin' me up on the station platform when we got off, either. I was the first man to swing from the steps, and I makes a bee line for the road leadin' out towards Chester's place, not stoppin' for a hack. Pretty soon who should come drivin' after me but Curlylocks. He still has his book open, though; so he gets by without spottin' me, and I draws a long breath.

By the time I'd hoofed over the two miles between the stations and where Chester lives I'd done a lot of breathin'. It was quite some of a place to get to, one of these new-model houses, that wears the plasterin' on the outside and has a roof made of fancy drain pipe.

It's balanced right on the edge of the rocks, with the whole of Long Island sound for a back yard and more'n a dozen acres of private park between it and the road.

"Gee!" says I to Chester, "I should think this would be as lonesome as livin' in a lighthouse."

"Not with the mob that mother usually has around," says he.

If the attendance that night was a sample, I guess he was right; for the bunch that answers the dinner gong would have done credit to a summer hotel. Seems that Chester's old man had been a sour, unsociable old party in his day, keepin' the fam'ly shut up in a thirty-foot-front city house that was about as cheerful as a tomb, and havin' comp'ny to dinner reg'lar once a year.

But when he finally quit breathin', and the lawyers had pried the checkbook out of his grip, mother had sailed in to make up for lost time. It wasn't bridge and pink teas. She'd always had a hankerin'

for minglin' with the high brows, and it was them she went gunnin'

for,--anything from a college president down to lady novelists.

Anybody that could paint a prize picture, or break into print in the thirty-five-cent magazines, or get his name up as havin' put the scoop net over a new germ, could win a week of first cla.s.s board from her by just sendin' in his card.

But it was tough on Chester, havin' that kind of a gang around all the time, clutterin' up the front hall with their extension grips and droppin' polysyllables in the soup. Chetty's brow was a low cut.

Maybe he had a full set of brains; but he hadn't ever had to work 'em overtime, and he didn't seem anxious to try. About all the heavy thinkin' he did was when he was orderin' lunch at the club. But he was a big, full blooded, good natured young feller, and with the exercise he got around to the Studio he kept in pretty good trim.

How he ever come to get stuck on a girl like Angelica, though, was more'n I could account for. She's one of these slim, big eyed, breathless, gushy sort of females; the kind that tends out on picture shows, and piano recitals, and Hindu lectures. Chester seems to have a bad case of it, though.

"Is she on hand to-night, Chetty?" says I.

He owns up that she was. "And say, Shorty," says he, "I want you to meet her. Come on, now. I've told her a lot about you."

"That bein' the case," says I, "here's where Angelica gets a treat,"

and we starts out to hunt for her, Chester's plan bein' to make me the excuse for the boxin' exhibit.

But Angelica didn't seem to be so easy to locate. First we strikes the music room, where a heavy weight gent lately come over from Warsaw is tearin' a thunder storm out of the southwest corner of the piano.

The room was full of folks; but nary sign of the girl with the eyes.

Nor she wa'n't in the libr'y, where a four-eyed duck with a crop of rusty chin spinach was ga.s.sin' away about the sun spots, or something.

Say, there was 'most any kind of brain stimulation you could name bein'

handed out in diff'rent parts of that house; but Angelica wa'n't to any of 'em.

It was just by accident, as we was takin' a turn around one of the verandas facin' the water, that, we runs across a couple camped down in a corner seat under a big palm. The girl in pink radium silk was Angelica. And say, by moonlight she's a bunch' of honeysuckle! The other party was our old friend Curlylocks, and I has to grin at the easy way he has of pickin' out the best looker in sight and leadin' her off where she wouldn't have to listen to anybody but him. He has the po'try tap turned on full blast, and the girl is listenin' as pleased as if she had never heard anything better in her life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE HAS THE PO'TRY TAP TURNED ON FULL BLAST]

"Confound him!" says Chester under his breath. "He's here again, is he?"

"Looks like this part of the house was gettin' crowded, Chetty," says I. "Let's back out."

"Hanged if I do!" says he, and proceeds to do the b.u.t.t in act about as gentle as a truck horse boltin' through a show window. "Oh, you're here, Angelica!" he growls out. "I've been hunting all over the shop for you."

"S-s-s.h.!.+" says Angelica, holding up one finger and him off with the other hand.

"Yes, I see," says Chester; "but----"

"Oh, please run away and don't bother!" says she. "That's a good boy, now Chester."

"Oh, darn!" says Chester.

That was the best he could do too, for they don't even wait to see us start. Angelica gives us a fine view of her back hair, and Mr.

Curlylocks begins where he left off, and spiels away. It was a good deal the same kind of rot he had shoved at me on the train,--all about hearts and lovin' and so on,--only here he throws in business with the eyelashes, and seems to have pulled out the soft vocal stops.

Chester stands by for a minute, tryin' to look holes through 'em, and then he lets me lead him off.

"Now what do you think of that?" says he, makin' a face like he'd tasted something that had been too long in the can.

"Why," says I, "it's touchin', if true. Who's the home destroyer with the vaseline voice and the fuzzy nut?"

"He calls himself Sylvan Vickers," says Chester. "He's a poet--a sappy, slushy, milk and water poet. Writes stuff about birds and flowers and love, and goes around spouting it to women."

"Why," says I, "he peeled off a few strips for me, comin' up on the cars, and I though it was hot stuff."

"Honest, Shorty," says Chester, swallowin' the string as fast as I could unwind the ball, "you--you don't like that kind of guff, do you?"

"Oh, well," says I, "I don't wake up in the night and cry for it, and maybe I can worry along for the next century or so without hearin' any more; but he's sure found some one that does like it, eh?"

There's no sayin' but what Chester held himself in well; for if ever a man was ent.i.tled to a grouch, it was him. But he says mighty little, just walks off scowlin' and settin' his teeth hard. I knew what was good for that; so I hints that he round up his chappies and go down into the gym. to work it off.

Chetty's enthusiasm for mitt jugglin' has all petered out, though, and it's some time before I can make him see it my way. Then we has to find his crowd, that was scattered around in the different rooms, lonesome and tired; so it's late in the evenin' before we got under way.

Chester and me have had a round or so, and he'd just wore out one of his friends and was tryin' to tease somebody else to put 'em on, when I spots a rubber neck in the back of the hall.

"O-o-h, see who's here, Chetty!" says I, whisperin' over his shoulder.

It was our poet friend, that has had to give up Angelica to her maw.

He's been strayin' around loose, and has wandered in through the gym.

doors by luck. Now, Chester may not have any mighty intellect, but there's times when he can think as quick as the next one. He takes one glance at Curlylocks, and stiffens like a bird dog pointin' a partridge.

"Say," says he all excited, "do you suppose--could we get him to put them on?"

"Not if you showed you was so anxious as all that," says I.

"Then you ask him, Shorty," he whispers. "I'll give a hundred for just one round--two hundred."

"S-s-s.h.!.+" says I. "Take it easy."

Ever see an old lady tryin' to shoo a rooster into a fence corner, while the old man waited around the end of the woodshed with the axe?

You know how gentle and easy the trick has to be worked? Well, that was me explainin' to Curlylocks how we was havin' a little exercise with the kid pillows,--oh, just a little harmless tappin' back and forth, so's we could sleep well afterwards,--and didn't he feel like tryin' it for a minute with Chester? Smooth! Some of that talk of mine would have greased an axle.

Sylvie, old boy, he blinks at me through his gla.s.ses, like a poll parrot sizin' up a firecracker that little Jimmy wants to hand him. He don't say anything, but he seems some interested. He reaches out for one of the mitts and pokes a finger into the paddin', lookin' it over as if it was some kind of a curiosity.

"Reg'lar swan's down cus.h.i.+ons," says I.