now," says the wife to me, "what d'ye mean by bringin' them plumbers up here for a union meetin', eh?"
"Don't be always knockin'!" I answers, gettin' peeved. "Them boys is all honest and true, even if they do look a little rough to the naked eye. But how is it you come back to-day when you wasn't due for a month?"
"You're tickled to death to see me, ain't you?" she asks, pullin' the pout that formerly helped sell the magazines.
To be level with you, I was – mad and all.
"Why, dearie!" I remarks, kissin' her. "You know I – "
"Easy with the oil!" she cuts me off. "Get on your hat and coat; we're goin' right down to Grand Central Station."
"Don't you think it's liable to tire you, honey," I asks her, "runnin' back and forth from Lakewood like this?"
"I'm not goin' to Lakewood, Stupid," she says. "We're goin' down to meet Alex Hanley – of course you remember him?"
I threw in the self-starter on the old brain, but there was nothin' doin'.
"No!" I says. "To come right out with it – I don't. I realize though that he must be a lu-lu when we're goin' down and meet him at the station. What did he do – lick Dempsey?"
"Idiot!" says the wife, callin' me by her favorite pet name. "He's my cousin."
Oh, boy!
We was goin' down in the elevator and I sunk in the seat with a low moan. In the short space since me and the wife had been wed, I had met her father, six brothers, four nephews, three cousins and a bevy of her uncles. They all claimed they was pleased to meet me, though they couldn't figure how their favorite female relative come to fall for me – and then they folleyed that lead up with a request for everything from a job to ten bucks.
"All right, dearie," I says, finally, "I'm game! Believe me, though, while your family is all aces to me on account of bein' related to you, I often find myself wishin' that you had been an orphan!"
"I could of married a couple of millionaires!" sighs the wife. "And to think I turned 'em down for you!"
"If you had married a couple of millionaires, you would of been pinched!" I says. "What d'ye think this cousin of yours will want to start off with, from your affectionate husband?"
"Nothin'!" she tells me. "Alex never asked a favor in his life. Believe me, this one is different!"
"I can see that from here!" I says. "If you claim he won't take me for something he's different, all right. In fact I can hardly believe he belongs to the family at all."
"I was brought up never to brawl in the open," says the wife, "so I'm lettin' your insults go. This boy is fresh from the mountains of Vermont. He's never been to New York in his life and he's comin' here now to make his mark."
"I'll lay you eight to five I'm the mark!" I says.
We was at the station then, so we had to practise self-denial and quit scrappin'. The wife explained that she had hardly got to Lakewood when she found a telegram there from her cousin Alex sayin' that he was comin' down for a visit. So she beat it right back to meet him, not wantin' the poor kid to breeze into a town like New York, all by his lonesome.
Well, we stand in the middle of the waitin'-room like a couple of boobs for a while, and then a guy, which I figured must be a college devil bustin' into a new fraternity, comes gallopin' across the floor, slams a suitcase down on my foot and throws his arms around the wife's neck. He had on a cap which could of been used as a checker board when you got tired of wearin' it, a suit of clothes that must of been made by a maniac tailor and the yellowest tan shoes I ever seen in my life. If he had been three inches taller and an ounce thinner, you could of put a tent around him and got a dime admission. On his upper lip, which was of a retirin' disposition, he had a mustache that was an outright steal from Chaplin.
I watched him and my wife embrace as long as I could stand it and then I tapped her on the shoulder.
"I suppose this is Alex, eh?" I says – while he looks at me for the first time.
"You got Sherlock Holmes lookin' stupid!" admits the wife. "Alex, meet my lord and master."
"Howdy, cousin!" hollers Alex. "I knowed you the minute I seen you from them, now, big ears you got. Y'know they went to work and printed your picture in the Sunday papers last month on a charge of havin' won the, now, pennant for – Well, that's neither here nor there. I come here to make good! A feller with brains can always do that in these big rube towns like New York. Of course a baseball player don't need no brains – you know that yourself and – "
"C'mon, Alex," butts in the wife quickly, seein' I was gettin' ready to grab Alex by the neck. "We'll go right up to the flat and have something to eat. I'll bet you haven't had a bite since you left home – you ought to be starved by this time!"
"I'd rather see him shot, myself!" I growls, taggin' along after them, carryin' this bird's suitcase. If they was clothes in there, Alex must of dressed in armor up in Vermont. The thing was as heavy as two dollars' worth of corn beef and cabbage. However, I figured I'd get back at Alex the minute he asked me for a job. I was all set for this bird, believe me!
"So this is New York, hey?" he pipes through his nose the minute we get outside the station. He stops dead in the street, gazin' up at the big buildin's and then down at the crowds like a guy in a trance. All he needed was a streamer of hay in his mouth and the first seven guys that passed would of offered to sell him the Bronx. He gasps a couple of times and wipes his eyes.
"Well, Alex," I says, tryin' hard not to laugh in his face, "what d'ye think of New York? Considerable burg, eh?"
He shakes his head kinda sad and sighs.
"I'll speak plain to you, cousin," he says. "Of all the rube burgs I ever seen, this here's the limit!"
I liked to fell down one of them Subway holes!
"Rube town?" I yells. "Where d'ye get that stuff? Are you seekin' to kid me?"
He grabs me by the shoulders and swings me around.
"Just you look at that crowd of folks on the corner there!" he tells me. He points over to where half New York is bein' held up in a traffic jam – wagons, autos, surface cars and guys usin' rubber heels as a means of locomotion, all waitin' for the cop to say, "Go!"
"Just look at 'em!" repeats Alex, sneering at me. "From the reports that have reached me, this here's the town where all the brains in the world is gathered. There's a couple hundred of them brains on the corner there now, I reckon, and they can't go nowheres till that constabule gives the word! Huh!" he snorts, turnin' away. "All just a lot of rubes, that's all!"
We get in a taxi and all the way up Alex kept lookin' out the window, shakin' his head and mutterin' somethin' about Manhattan bein' a well-advertised bunk and all the inhabitants thereof bein' hicks. I don't know whether he was after my goat or not, but in a few minutes he had it.
"Listen, gentle stranger," I says, when nature could stand no more, "I realize that New York is nothin' but a flag station and that we're all Reubens and chew hay, but we have, amongst other things, six million merry villagers, the biggest buildings in the world, the subway, gunmen, cabarets, Broadway, and – well, a lot of things that you gotta admit ain't hit dear old Vermont as yet!"
"And I most sincerely hope and trust they never will!"
