“Well, the concert went fine, with the hired lady professional singer giving us some operatic gems in various foreign languages in the first part, and Ed Bughalter singing “A King of the Desert Am I, Ha, Ha!” very bass—­Ed always sounds to me like moving heavy furniture round that ain’t got any casters under it—­and Mrs. Dr. Percy Hailey Martingale with the “Jewel Song” from Faust, that she learned in a musical conservatory at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and “Coming Through the Rye” for an encore—­holding the music rolled up in her hands, though the Lord knows she knew every word and note of it by heart—­and the North Side Ladies’ String Quartet, and Wilbur Todd, of course, putting on more airs than as if he was the only son of old man Piano himself, while he shifted the gears and pumped, and Nettie whispering that he always slept two hours before performing in public and took no nourishment but one cup of warm milk—­just a bundle of nerves that way—­and she sent him up a bunch of lilies tied with lavender ribbon while he was bowing and scraping, but I didn’t pay no attention to that, for now it was coming.

“Yes, sir, the last thing was this here lady professional, getting up stern and kind of sweetish sad in her low-cut black dress to sing the song of songs.  I was awful excited for a party of my age, and I see they was, too.  Nettie nudged Chet and whispered, ‘Don’t you just love it?’ And Chet actually says, ‘I love it,’ so no wonder I felt sure, when up to that time he’d hardly been able to say a word except about his pa being willing to take them calves for almost nothing.  Then I seen his eyes glaze and point off across the hall, and darned if there wasn’t this manicure party in a cheek little hat and tailored gown, setting with Mrs. Henry Lehman and her husband.  But still I felt all right, because him and Nettie was nudging each other intimately again when Professor Gluckstein started in on the accompaniment—­I bet Wilbur thinks the prof is awful old-fashioned, playing with his fingers that way; I know they don’t speak on the street.

“So this lady just floated into that piece with all the heart stops pulled out, and after one line I didn’t begrudge her a cent of my fifty.  I just set there and thrilled.  I could feel Nettie and Chet thrilling, too, and I says, ‘There’s nothing to it—­not from now on.’

“The applause didn’t bust loose till almost a minute after she’d kissed the cross in that rich brown voice of hers, and even then my couple didn’t join in.  Nettie set still, all frozen and star-eyed, and Chester was choking and sniffling awful emotionally.  ’I’ve sure nailed the young fools,’ I thinks.  And, of course, this lady had to sing it again, and not half through was she when, sure enough, I glanced down sideways and Chet’s right hand and her left hand is squirming together till they look like a bunch of eels.  ‘All over but the rice,’ I says, and at that I felt so good and thrilled!  I was thinking