st evenin' meal. I got a armful of
these here liberty links, _nee_ frankfurters, and some liberty cabbage
which before the Kaiser went nutty was knowed as sauerkraut. They
ain't no use callin' off all the other little trinkets I got to help
make the table look tasty, especially as Mister Hoover is liable to
scan this and I don't wanna get myself in wrong, but when I got through
shoppin' I didn't have enough change left out of a five-case note to
stake myself to a joyride in the subway.

Just as we're goin' to the post in this supper handicap, the bell
rings, and in come Eve, which same is no less than the blushin' bride
of Alex. They is now so many people in the flat that for all the
neighbors know I have opened up a gamblin' dive or one of them cabaret
things. Everybody is talkin', with the exception of me, which havin'
sit down to eat proceeded to do so with the greatest abandon, as the
guy says. Them three girls--the wife, the lovely Mrs. Wilkinson and
Eve, was sure some layout to have across the table, I'll tell the world
fair! They had the front row of the Follies lookin' like washwomen
durin' the rush hour, and all I did was sit there and eat and wonder
how in Heaven's name they ever come to fall for a set of guys like me,
Alex and the lovely Wilkinson.

Well, the meal come to an end without no violence, and they was only
one time when it seemed like boxin' gloves would be needed. Even that
wasn't exactly _my_ fault. From the general chatter of the lovely
Wilkinson, I figured him as a big, fatheaded, good-lookin' bonehead
whose greatest trick so far had been marryin' his wife. He got my goat
a coupla times hand runnin' by dealin' himself, first, the last piece
of bread and, second, the last potato on the table. Either one of them
things would of enraged me by themselves, but pullin' 'em together was
a open dare to me to commit homicide. I laid for him for a half hour
and fin'ly I get a openin'.

"Mister Wilkinson is packed to the ears with ambition," says the wife
to me across the table. "He expects to fall into a lot of money very
shortly."

"I don't see how they can be no room for him to be packed with nothin'
else," I says, "after all the meat and potatoes he put away to-night.
And as far as that fallin' into a lot of money is concerned, he must be
figurin' on stumblin' at the door of the mint, hey?"

They is a dead silence and the lovely Wilkinson give a nervous snicker
and piled up his plate