Humorous stories; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Private secretaries -- Fiction
Maybe you don't remember, but I almost picked out his wife for him, and
when she'd set the date he turns over all the rest of the details to me,
even to providin' a minister and arrangin' his bridal tour. Honest I
expect when the time comes for him to step up and be measured for a set
of wings and a halo he'll look around for me to hold his place in the
line until his turn comes. And he won't be quite satisfied with the
arrangements unless I'm on hand.
So I ought to be prepared for 'most any old assignment to be hung on the
hook. I must say, though, that in the case of this domestic mix-up of
Mrs. Bruce Mackey's I was caught gawpin' on and unsuspectin'. In fact, I
was smotherin' a mild snicker at the situation, not dreamin' that I'd
ever get any nearer to it than you would to some fool movie plot you
might be watchin' worked out on the screen.
We happens to crash right into the middle of it, Vee and me, when we
drops in for our usual Sunday afternoon call on the Ellinses and finds
these week-end guests of theirs puttin' it up to Mr. and Mrs. Robert to
tell 'em what they ought to do. Course, this Mrs. Mackey is an old
friend of Mrs. Robert's and we'd seen 'em both out there before; in
fact, we'd met 'em when she was Mrs. Richard Harrington and Bruce was
just a sympathetic bachelor sort of danglin' around and makin' himself
useful. So it wasn't quite as if they'd sprung the thing on total
strangers.
And, anyway, it don't rate very rank as a scandal. Not as scandals run.
This No. 1 hubby, Harrington, had simply got what was coming to him,
only a little late. Never was cut out to play the lead in a quiet
domestic sketch. Not with his temperament and habits. Hardly. Besides,
he was well along in his sporty career when he discovered this
19-year-old pippin with the trustin' blue eyes and the fascinatin' cheek
dimples. But you can't tell a bad egg just by glancin' at the shell, and
she didn't stop to hold him in front of a candle. Lucky for the
suspender wearin' sex there ain't any such pre-nuptial test as that, eh?
She simply tucked her head down just above the top pearl stud, I
suppose, and said she would be his'n without inquirin' if that cocktail
breath of his was a regular thing or just an accident.
But she wasn't long in findin' out that it was chronic. Oh yes. He
wasn't known along Broadway as Dick Harry for nothing. He might be more
or less of a success as a corporation lawyer between 10:30 and 5 p. m.
in the daytime, but after the shades of night was well tied down and the
cabarets begun takin' the lid off he was apt to be missin' from the
fam'ly fireside. Wine, women and the deuces wild was his specialties,
and when little wifie tried to read the riot act to him at 3 a. m. he
just naturally told her where she got off. And on occasions, when the
deuces hadn't been runnin' his way, or the night had been wilder than
usual, he was quite rough about it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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