give her fifty or so, and ship her off."

"That's kind of small, considerin' the pile we got to draw on, ain't it!" says I. "And it strikes me that since Pyramid put her name down he meant—— Let's see if there ain't something special she wants."

"Say," sings out Mrs. Shaw, "what about that will business? If it was old Gordon, I suppose he wouldn't leave me much. He had no call to."

"About what would you expect, now?" says I, as we drifts back to her.

She squints foxy at us for a minute. "After all this fuss," says she, "it ought to be two or77 three hundred—maybe five. No, I mean a thousand."

77

"Huh!" says I. "A thousand! Got your nerve with you, ain't you? But suppose it was that much, what would you do with it?"

"Do!" says she, her eyes brightenin'. "Why, I would—I—— Ah, what's the use! I'd make a fool of myself, of course. And inside of ten days I'd be in a D.T. ward somewhere."

"No old home or folks that you could go back to?" I suggests.

She shakes her head. "It's too late for me to go back," says she. "Too late!" She don't try to be tragic, don't even whine it out, but just states it dull and flat.

"But most everyone has a friend or so somewhere," says I.

At first that don't make any impression at all. Then all of a sudden she sits up and gazes vague over the top of my head.

"There's the Baron!" says she.

"The which?" says I.

"Von Blatzer," says she. "Oh, he's a real Baron, all right; an odd-looking, dried up little chap with a wig and painted eyebrows. Yet he's hardly sixty. I got to know him at Atlantic City, where I had a Board Walk pitch one season. Queer? That's no word for it! Shy and lonesome he was; but after you got to know him, one of the brightest, jolliest old78 duffers. Our first talk was out on the end of one of those long piers, by moonlight.

78

"After that it was a regular thing. We'd walk up and down like two kids, telling each other all about ourselves. I'd never stated my full opinion of Fletcher 

 Prev. P 46/197 next