“I don’t know whether I plucked a quince or not.  Wilbur kept insisting that I go to the table every time they turned in an alarm, and I was sorta holding off, ’cause I didn’t want to lance the poor boy for all his change on the way over, but he kept insisting that I eat and acted so peevish when I didn’t that I thought, well, if he wants to spend his money all right, so I eat so much that I couldn’t have crowded any more in me with a hypo.  Come to find out the food was included in the passage and we had to pay for it whether we ate it or not.  That’s why I am wondering if I plucked a quince.  Wilbur was never tight before we were wed, and you can take it from me that if he starts to hold out or draw down now there is going to be fine large doings in the Wilbur family from the female delegation.

“Wilbur was in the smoking room the other evening and got to talking with what he thought were a couple of boobs, but come to find out they were wise guys.  After sipping up a couple of slow ones, the guys propose a little poker game.  Wilbur and two other boobs fall for the bunk and they open up.  Wilbur, after losing a little junk, gives the wise guys the office that he’s jerry to the fact that they are playing with newspaper, and lets them know that if he ain’t in on the frame-up he’ll belch.

“These two boobs are dirty with the evergreen, and Wilbur’s got the wise guys so leary for fear he will tip his mitt and they naturally slip him a big one every time they get a chance.  Wilbur gets his money back and everything is even all around, but the wise guys are the only ones who want to lay down.

“Wilbur hands them a game of cheerful chatter and they don’t dare quit.  Foxy Wilbur sits there until 3 a.m., raking in their money, and incidentally corrals some that belongs to the wealthy wops.  In the meantime I am doing the earnest conversation act with an old dowager that I met the second day out and she is telling me about her country home in Devonshire or some other one of these shire things.  She sorta took a fancy to me and insisted that Wilbur and I should run out there for a week-end.  Which end of the week she didn’t say.  But I guess if we go Sunday we are safe.  To hear this old dame tell it, she must own about nine million acres up in the country, and her husband has all kinds of wild animals—­lions, tigers, elephants and all that truck that are trained to be shot.  She called it a shooting lodge.  Probably a branch of the Elks.  This old party ceases her harangue and I beat it to the air-felt and am pounding my ear when Wilbur kicks in with a souse on.

“I come out of the hay and am getting ready to call him to a fare-you-well when he flashes his bundle.  My anger vanished in a moment and I just reach out and cop the coin and roll over and goes to sleep.  Wilbur sleeps