in' 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 Vermon