Andy's and looked after some o' my other investments.
We always have dinner Sundays at one o'clock, but o' course Bishop didn't know that and showed up prompt at ten bells, before I was half-way through the comical section. I had to go to the door because the Missus don't never put on her shoes till she's positive the family on the first floor is all awake, and Bessie was baskin' in the kind o' water that don't come in your lease at Wabash.
"Mr. Bishop, ain't it?" I says, lookin' him straight in the upper lip.
"How'd you know?" he says, smilin'.
"The girls told me to be expectin' a handsome man o' that name," I says. "And they told me about the mustache."
"Wouldn't be much to tell," says Bishop.
"It's young yet," I says. "Come in and take a weight off your feet."
So he picked out the only chair we got that ain't upholstered with flatirons and we set down and was tryin' to think o' somethin' more to say when Bessie hollered to us from mid-channel.
"Is that Mr. Bishop?" she yelped.
"It's me, Miss Gorton," says Bishop.
"I'll be right out," says Bess.
"Take it easy," I says. "You mightn't catch cold, but they's no use riskin' it."
So then I and Bishop knocked the street-car service and President Wilson and give each other the double O. He wasn't what you could call ugly lookin', but if you'd come out in print and say he was handsome, a good lawyer'd have you at his mercy. His dimensions, what they was of them, all run perpendicular. He didn't have no latitude. If his collar slipped over his shoulders he could step out of it. If they hadn't been payin' him all them millions for pitcher plays, he could of got a job in a wire wheel. They wouldn't of been no difference in his photograph if you took it with a X-ray or a camera. But he had hair and two eyes and a mouth and all the rest of it, and his clo'es was certainly class. Why wouldn't they be? He could pick out cloth that was thirty bucks a yard and get a suit and overcoat for fifteen bucks. A umbrella cover would of made him a year's pyjamas.
Well, I seen the Missus sneak from the kitchen to her room to don the shoe leather, so I got right down to business.
"The girls tells me you're fond o' good music," I says.
"I love it," says Bishop.
"Do you ever take in the op'ra?" I ast him.
"I eat it up," he says.
"Have you been this year?" I says.
"Pretty near every night," says Bishop.
"I should think you'd be sick of it," says I.
"Oh, no," he says, "no more'n I get tired o' food."
"A man could easy get tired o' the same kind o' food," I says.
"But the op'ras is all different," says Bishop.
"Different languages, maybe," I says. "But they're all music and singin'."
"Yes," says Bishop, "but the music and singin' in the different op'ras is no more alike than lumbago and hives. They couldn't be nothin' differenter, for instance, than Faust and Madame Buttermilk."
"Unlest it was Scotch and chocolate soda," I says.
"They's good op'ras and bad op'ras," says Bishop.
"Which is the good ones?" I ast him.
"Oh," he says, "Carmen and La Bohemian Girl and Ill Toreador."
"Carmen's a bear cat," I says. "If they was all as good as Carmen, I'd go every night. But lots o' them is flivvers. They say they couldn't nothin' be worse than this Armour's Dee Tree Ree."
"It is pretty bad," says Bishop. "I seen it a year ago."
Well, I'd just been readin' in the paper where it was bran'-new and hadn't never been gave prev'ous to this season. So I thought I'd have a little sport with Mr. Smartenstein.
"What's it about?" I says.
He stalled a w'ile.
"It ain't about much of anything," he says.
"It must be about somethin'," says I.
"They got it all balled up the night I seen it," says Bishop. "The actors forgot their lines and a man couldn't make heads or tails of it."
"Did they sing in English?" I ast him.
"No; Latin," says Bishop.
"Can you understand Latin?" I says.
"Sure," says he. "I'd ought to. I studied it two years."
"What's the name of it mean in English?" I ast.
"You pronounce the Latin wrong," he says. "I can't parse it from how you say it. If I seen it wrote out I could tell."
So I handed him the paper where they give the op'ra schedule.
"That's her," I says, pointin' to the one that was billed for Tuesday night.
"Oh, yes," says Bishop. "Yes, that's the one."
"No question about that," says I. "But what does it mean?"
"I knowed you said it wrong," says Bishop. "The right pronouncement would be: L. Armour's Day Trey Ray. No wonder I was puzzled."
"Now the puzzle's solved," I says. "What do them last three words mean? Louie Armour's what?"
"It ain't nothin' to do with Armour," says Bishop. "The first word is the Latin for love. And Day means of God, and Trey means three, and Ray means Kings."
"Oh," I says, "it's a poker game. The fella's just called and the other fella shows down his hand and the first fella had a straight and thought it wasn't no good. So he's su'prised to see what the other fella's got. So he says: 'Well, for the love o' Mike, three kings!' Only he makes it stronger. Is that the dope?"
"I don't think it's anything about poker," says Bishop.
"You'd ought to know," I says. "You seen it."
"But it was all jumbled up," says Bishop. "I couldn't get the plot."
"Do you suppose you could get it if you seen it again?" I says.
"I wouldn't set through it," he says. "It's no good."
Well, sir, I thought at the time that that little speech meant a savin' of eight dollars, because if he didn't go along, us three could set amongst the riff and raff. I dropped the subject right there and was goin' to tell the girls about it when he'd went home. But the Missus crabbed it a few minutes after her and Bess come in the room.
"Did you get your invitation?" says she to Bishop.
"What invitation?" he says.
"My husban' was goin' to ask you to go with us Tuesday night," she says. "Grand op'ra."
"Bishop won't go," I
