Believe You Me! Part 15

"What's your name, dearie?" says Ma, which I simply can't learn her not to be familiar with servants.

"Anna," says the lump.

"And where do you come from?" says Ma, giving a poor imitation of a detective.

"Old Country," says Anna. Well, Ma and me at once exchanged glances, putting name and place together.

"German?" says Ma. "Of course!"

"Swedish," says Anna, more lumpishly than ever.

And just at that moment the air was filled with a big laugh that none of us there had give voice to. It was _some_ shock, that laugh, and Ma and me looked around expecting to see who had come into the room, but it was n.o.body. Anna was the only one who didn't seem disturbed. She just went on sitting.

"Who was that?" says Ma.

"It must of been outside," I says, for it was warm and we had the windows open so's to let in the gasoline and railroad smoke and a little fresh air.

"I guess so," says Ma. Then she went back to her third-degree.

"So you're Swedis.h.!.+" says Ma. "Can you cook?"

"Good!" says Anna. "Svell cook!"

"Well, dearie!" says Ma, "why was it you left your last place?"

"Too hot!" says Anna. And again me and Ma exchanged glances.

"Are you a good American?" says Ma.

"Good American-Swedish," says Anna. And immediately that awful laugh was repeated. This time it was in the room, no doubt about it. And yet no one was there outside ourselfs.

"My Gawd!" says Ma. "What was it?"

"Somebody is hid some place!" I says. "And I'd like to know who is it with the cheap sense of humor?"

"It bane Frits," says Anna. "Na, na, Frits!"

"But where on earth . . ." I was commencing, when I noticed Anna was unwinding the shawl off the package in her lap. And then in another moment we seen Frits for our own selves, for there he was, a big moth-eaten parrot, interned in a cage, making wicked eyes at us and giving us the ha-ha like the true Hun he was!

"Frits and me, we stay!" announced Anna comfortably. "We stay!"

"But look here," says I, "we didn't start out to hire any parrots."

"Why Mary Gilligan!" says Ma, and I could see she was scared that if Frits went Anna would certainly go, too. "Why Mary Gilligan, I thought you was fond of dumb animals!" she says.

"And so I am," I says. "The dumber the better. But this one is evidently far from it! How am I going to figure out my income tax with this bird hanging around?"

"Hang in den Kitchen!" says Anna firmly, and at that we gave in, because cooks is cooks, and what's a bird more or less after all? Still I didn't like him on account of suspecting he wasn't a neutral any more than Anna was for all she claimed to be a Swede. I had read a piece in the paper about where the Germans was pretending to be Swede or Spanish or anything they could get away with so's to remain free to spread Bolshevism and influenza and bombs and send up the price of dry and fancy goods and put through the Prohibition amendment and all them other gentle little activities for which they are so well and justly known.

But I thought knowledge is power as the guy which wrote the copy-book says, and I had the drop on Anna through being on to her disguise and beside which I could see Ma was going to be miserable if she had to eat out while her hand was in the sling, and so we took the viper to our bosom, or in other words, we hired her, and anyways, she had already accepted the job and it would of been a lot of trouble to get her out by force. Which, believe you me, a person seldom has to do with servants now-a-days, and confirmed me about her being German because naturally people don't hire them, if acknowledging to themselves that they _are_ Germans any more than they would now deliberately import sauerkraut or any other German industry. Do you get me? You'd better!

But in this case there was a reasonable doubt together with a real necessity, although from what come of it, I feel, looking backwards, it would of been better to eat out and suffer than to of compromised with our patriotic consciences like we done at that time. Because there is _no_ reasonable doubt but that Anna's coming into the house was greatly responsible for Ma's catching Bolshevism.

II

NOT that she caught it off Anna directly, because for once we had a cook which couldn't talk or understand American and so there was no use in Ma's hanging around the kitchen worrying the life out of her. And so the very first morning Anna was on the premises, Ma commenced hanging around and worrying the life out of me.

It happened we was waiting for the aeroplane I was to go up in to arrive at the studio, and so for once having my morning for myself, I thought I would just dash off my income tax return, and be done with it.

But it seems that this is one of the things which is easier said than done, the same as signing the peace-treaty, and believe you me, the last ain't got a thing on the former and I don't know did Pres. Wilson make out his own income tax return or not. But if he did and the collector of Internal Revenue left him get by with it as he must of or why would the Pres. be in Paris, which is out of the country, well anyways, if the Pres. did it alone, believe you me, he will get away with the treaty all right, and probably even write in this here Leg of Nations under table 13, page 1, of return and instructions page 2 under K (b) without having to ask anybody how to do it, he having undoubtedly shown the power to think.

Well anyways, I had taken all the poker-chips, silk-sale samples, old theatre programs and etc., out of my desk, found my fountain pen and a bottle of ink, and was turning that cute little literacy test around and over to see where would I commence and had got no further than the realization that most of my brains is in my feet instead of behind my face, when Ma comes in and commences worrying me because she could not cook nor yet crochet like the lillies of the field, or whatever that well-known idle flower was. I tried to listen at least as politely as is ever required of a daughter to her mother, but when I was trying to figure out my answer to question No. 5 and getting real mad over its personalness, I couldn't stand to hear her complain over not being able to crochet them terrible mats she makes which are not fit for anything except Xmas presents, anyways.

"The trouble with you, Ma," I snapped at last, "is that you aught to get a live-wire outside interest. You're getting out of date. Ladies don't crochet no more and even knitting has been dished by the armistice. You never read a newspaper or a book. You should go in for something snappy and up to the moment like literature or jobs for soldiers, or business, or something."

This got Ma's goat right off, like I hoped it would.

"Oh, so I'm on the shelf, am I?" she says, "well, leave me tell you Mary Gilligan, if it wasn't for us back numbers you new numbers wouldn't even _be_ here, don't forget that! And after having been the first American lady to do the double backward leap on the two center trapeses, I can hardly be called a dead one, even if a little heavier than I was. And from that time on I have never ceased to be forward."

"You'd have to show me," I says, grimly.

"All right, I will," she says.

And believe you me, she did. She went and got on her dolman and her spring hat and left me in wrath and the midst of that income tax with that "I'll never come back" air so familiar to all well-regulated families.

Well, as I sat there struggling over where to put the and = marks, and how much exemption could I get away with and still be on speaking terms with myself, and wondering whether the two fool dogs was dependents or not--which they aught to be, seeing how helpless they are and a big expense and Gawd knows I keep them only for appearances and they aught to come under the head of professional expenditures, because no well-known actress but has them to help out the scenery--well anyways, I was deep in this highly high-brow occupation in the comparatively perfect silence of my exclusive flat where ordinarily we don't hear a thing but the neighbors' pianola and the dumb-waiter and the auto horns on the drive and the train just beyond--well, this comparatively for New York, perfect silence was broke by an awful yell in the apartment itself.

"Anarchy!" a terrible voice hollered. And then again "Anarchy! Anarchy!"

Believe you me, my blood turned to lemon soda for a moment and the boys in the trenches never had worse crawling down the back than me at that minute, coming as it did right on top of me, writing in opposite to B.

income from salaries--you know--$60,000.00. The silence which followed was even worse. And I sat there sort of frozen while expecting a bomb would go off any minute, and Gawd knows sixty thousand is a lot of money, but any one which investigated the true facts could quickly see that I earn every cent of it and anyways brains has a right to the bigger share, not to mention ability, and if the way I worked myself up from the lower cla.s.ses ain't proof of what can be done single-handed in America, I don't know what is, and anybody which works as hard and lives as decent as I done can do the same, not that I want to hand myself anything extra, only speaking personally, I am in a position to know.

But just the same I wasn't reasoning at the minute and the justice, as you might say, of my case didn't occur to me until later. As I sat there trying to remember to think, the voice yells it again, only this time with additions.

"Anarchy! Love Anarchy! Pretzel!"

And then I realised it was that parrot belonging to the new cook.

Can you imagine my feelings on top of my suspicions of her? You can! I got up and went into the kitchen to see if a bomb was may be being prepared for our dinner, but not at all. The kitchen was scrubbed to the last tile, something that smelled simply grand was baking, the white hyacinths was in the sun on the window-sill, and Anna was humming under her breath while she rolled out biscuit-dough. The radical parrot was shut up, but only as to mouth, he being loose and walking about the top of the clothes-wringer, making himself very much at home, and giving me _some_ evil look as I come in.

"Aren't you afraid he'll get away?" I says.

"Huh?" says Anna, stopping rolling, and blinking at me.

"Lose him--parrot----!" I says, pointing to him and flapping my arms like wings.

"Frits?" she said. "Na--Frits like liberty!"