na do about that chocolate
set, hey? D'ye hear--there goes another piece!"

"If I was in your place," I tells her, "I'd drink coffee, and if your
furnishings is all as frail as that chocolate set you're featurin', you
better grab hold of the piano, because I'm gonna sneeze!"

"Don't you dare make no cracks about my furniture!" she yells. "I got
my opinion of what you do for a livin' when you can afford to be home
in the daytime!"

"I make chocolate sets," I says. "We're workin' on one now and--"

"Wait till my husband comes home!" she cuts in. "He'll take care of
you!"

"I don't need nobody to take care of me," I comes back, "I'm self
supportin'."

"Why don't you let go there?" yells Eddie Brannan. "Are you and that
dame doin' an act or what?"

Zip! she hangs up and just then the front door-bell makes good.

"See who it is!" I calls to one of the gang, sittin' in the game again.
"Tell 'em I'm in Brazil and--"

Oh, boy!

One of them dead silences took place in the hall and--in walks the wife!

For the next five seconds it was so quiet in that flat that a graveyard
would seem like a locomotive works alongside of it. Joe Leity starts
to whistle soft and low, Abe Katz opens the dumbwaiter and looks down
to see what kind of a jump it is and I dropped a hundred aces on the
floor. The rest of the gang eases over to the door.

"Why--ah--eh--ah, what does this mean?" I says kinda weak. "I thought
you had went to Lakewood."

"Well," she says, turnin' the eyes, that used to fill the Winter Garden
every night, on the gang, "where d'ye figure I am now? I'll give you
three guesses!"

"Ahem!" says Joe Leity, "I guess I'll blow! I--"

"Me, too!" pipes the gang like a chorus and does a few more vamps to
the door.

"Why don't you introduce your friends?" says the wife. "Or maybe you
just run across these boys yourself when you come in, heh?"

"Excuse!" I says. "This here's Joe Leity, Abe Katz, Phil Young, Red
Dailey, Steve--"

"Never mind callin' the roll," she butts in. "I'll let it go en masse.
I'm delighted to meet you all, and I hope you won't run away simply
because I'm here."

"Oh, no--not at all--we ain't runnin' away!" they says.

"There's no reason for you boys _runnin'_ anyways," the wife goes on,
"because the elevator is right outside now and I think the boy is
holdin' the car for you--"

They blowed!

"And now," says the wife to me, "what d'ye mean by bringin' them
plumbers up here