Torchy and Vee
vacation. Believe me, you need it after you've drilled forty youngsters
all through a term. D-o-g, dog; c-a-t, cat. Why will the little imps
sing it through their noses? It's the same with the two-times table. And
they can be so stupid! I don't believe I was meant for a teacher,
anyway, for it all seems so useless to me, making them go through all
that, and keeping still for hours and hours, when they want so much to
be outdoors playing around. I'd like to be out myself."
"But after school hours," suggests Babe, "you surely have time to go in
for sports of some kind."
"What do you mean, sports?" asks Miss Snell.
"Oh, tennis, or horseback riding, or golf," says Babe.
She turns around quick and stares at him. "Are you kidding?" she
demands. "Or do you want to get me biting my upper lip? Say, on five
hundred a year, with board to pay and clothes to buy, you can't go in
very heavy for sports. I did blow myself to a tennis racquet and
rubber-soled shoes last summer and my financial standing has been below
par ever since. As for spare time, there's no such thing. When I've
finished helping Ma do the supper dishes there's always a pile of lesson
papers to go over, and reports to make out. And Saturdays I can do my
washing and mending, maybe shampoo my hair or make over a hat or
something. Can you figure in any chance for golf or horseback riding? I
can't, even if club dues were free to schoolma'ams and the board should
send around a lot of spotted ponies for our use. Not that I wouldn't
like to give those things a whirl once. I'm just foolish enough to
think I could do the sport stuff with the best of 'em."
"I'll bet you could, too," says Babe, enthusiastic. "You--you're just
the type."
"Yes," says Miss Snell, "and a fat lot of good that's going to do me. So
what's the use talking? In a year or so I suppose I'll be swinging a
broom around my own little flat, coaxing a kitchen range to hump itself
at 6:30 a.m., and hanging out a Monday wash for two."
"Oh!" says Babe. "Then you've picked out the lucky chap?"
"I don't know whether he's lucky or not," says she. "It isn't really
settled, anyway. Pete Snyder has been hanging around for some time, and
I expect I'll give in if he keeps it up. He's Dad's helper, you know,
and he isn't more'n half as dumb as he looks. Gosh! Here we are. I hope
none of the kids see you bringing me home and tell Pete about it. He'd
be green in the eye for a week. Good-by, Mr. Cutler, and much obliged."
As she skips out and up the path toward the little ramshackle cottage
she turns and flashes one of them wide smiles on Babe and gives him a
friendly wave.
"Well," says I. "Pete might do worse."
"I believe you," says Babe, kind of solemn.
Course, I didn't keep any close track of Mr. Cutler for the next few
days. There was no special reason why I should. I supposed he was busy
makin' up his quartette for that Southern cruise. So about a week later
I'm mildly surprised to hear that he's still stayin' on over at Sister
Mabel's. I didn't really suspicion anything until one afternoon, along
in the middle of January, when as I steps off the 5:10 I gets a glimpse
of Babe's blue racer waitin' at the crossing gates. And snuggled down
under the fur robe beside him, with her cheeks pinked up by the crisp
air and her brown eyes sparklin', is Miss Lucy Snell.
"Huh!" thinks I. "Still goin' on, eh? Or has Billy's little beak had
another leaky spell?"
Couldn't have been many days after that before I comes home to find Vee
all excited over some news she'd heard from Mrs. Robert Ellins.
"What do you think, Torchy!" says she. "That bachelor friend of Mr.
Robert, a Mr. Cutler, was married last night."
"Eh!" says I. "Babe?"
"Yes," says Vee. "And to a village girl, daughter of T. Snell, the
plumber. And his married sister is perfectly wild about it. Isn't it
dreadful?"
"Oh, I don't know," says I. "Might turn out all right."
"But--but she's a poor little school-teacher," protests Vee, "and Mr.
Cutler is--is----"
"A rich sport," I puts in, "who's always had what he wanted. And I
expect he thought he wanted Miss Snell. Looks so, don't it?"
I understand that Sister Mabel threw seven kinds of fits, and that the
country club set was all worked up over the affair, specially one of the
young ladies that had played in mixed foursomes with Babe and probably
had the net out for him. But he didn't come back to apologize or
anything like that. And the next we heard was that the happy pair had
started for Florida on their honeymoon.
Well, that seemed to finish the incident. Mr. Robert hunches his
shoulders and allows that Babe is old enough to manage his own affairs.
Sister Mabel calmed down, and the disappointed young ladies crossed Babe
off the last-hope list. Besides, a perfectly good scandal broke out in
the bridge playing and dancing set, and Babe Cutler's rapid little
romance was forgotten. Five or six Sundays came and went, with Mondays
following regular.
And then here the other afternoon, as I'm camped down next to the car
window on my way home, who should tap me on the shoulder but the same
old Babe. That is, unless you looked close. For there's a worried,
puzzled look in his wide set eyes and he don't spring the usual hail.
"Hello!" says I. "Ain't lost your baggage checks, have you?"
"It's worse than that," says he. "I--I've lost--Lucy."
"Wha-a-t!" says I, gaspy. "You don't mean she--she's----"
"No," says Babe. "She's just quit me and gone home."
"But--but why?" I blurted out.
"Lord knows," groans Babe. "That's what I want to find out."
Honest, it listens like a first-class mystery. According to him they'd
been staying at one of the swellest joints he could find in the whole
state of Florida. Also he'd bought Lucy all the kinds of clothes she
would let him buy, from sport suits to evening gowns. She'd taken up a
lot of different things, too--golf, riding, swimming, dancing. Seemed to
be having a bully time when--bang! She breaks out into a weepy spell and
announces that she is going home. Does it, too, all by her lonesome,
leaving Babe to trail along by the next train.
"And for the life of me, Torchy," he declares, "I can't imagine why."
"Well, let's try to piece it out," says I. "First off, how have you been
spending your honeymoon?"
"Oh, golf mostly," says he. "I was runner up in the big tournament."
"I see," says I. "Thirty-six holes a day, eh?"
He nods.
"And a jack-pot session with the old crowd every evening?" I asks.
"Oh, only now and then," says he.
"With a few late parties down in the grill?" I goes on.
"Not a party," says Babe. "State's dry, you know. No, generally we went
into the ballroom evenings and I helped Lucy try out the new steps she
was learning."
"You did!" says I. "Then I give it up."
"Me too," says Babe. "But I'm not going to give up Lucy. Say, she's a
regular person, she is. She was making good, too, and having a whale of
a time when all of a sudden--Say, Torchy, if it was some break I made I
want to know it, so I can square myself. She wouldn't tell me; wouldn't
have a word to say. But listen, perhaps if you asked her----"
"Hey, back up!" says I.
"You know, if it hadn't been for you I might never have seen her," he
goes on. "You were there when it began, and if there's to be a finish
you might as well be in on that, too. I've got to know what it was I
did, though. Honest, I can't remember anything particularly raw. Been
chewing over it for two nights. If you could just----"
Well, at the end of ten minutes I agrees to go up to the plumber's
house, and if the new Mrs. Cutler will see me I says I'll put it up to
her.
"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."
"Maybe," says I, "but I have my doubts. Anyway, it won't take long to
make a test."
And when I'd left her and strolled out to the gate where Babe is pacin'
up and down anxious, he demands at once: "Well, did you find out?"
"Uh-huh," says I.
"Was--was it something I did?" he asks trembly.
"Sure it was," says I. "You let her in for an intensive training act
that would make the Paris Island marine school grind look like a wand
drill. You should have had better sense, too. Why, what she was trying
to sop up in six weeks most young ladies give as many years to. Near as
I can judge she was making a game play of it, too. But of course she