with liberty links and cabbage to hide his
confusion. Alex laughs like a hyena and Mrs. Wilkinson looks even
prettier when mad than she did when tryin' to be a charmin' guest. The
wife gimme a glance that would of killed a guy with a weaker heart and
tries to laugh it off.

"You mustn't mind him," she says. "He's always kiddin' that way about
everything. Really--I'm--I'm so angry I don't know what to do!"

"I'll tell you what to do," I says. "See if you can get the embargo
lifted on that food down at your end of the table and ease a little
nourishment up here!"

"He oughta leave the table!" remarks Alex.

"You ain't talkin' to me!" I says. "I'm wonderin' if you guys will
leave the table or not. You already have eat everything else!"

"That's right!" says the wife. "Go ahead and advertise the fact that I
have married a roughneck!"

"My neck must of got that way from wearin' that sweater you knit me," I
says. "Hey, dearie?"

Eve gimme a laugh, but I seen the wife was gettin' ready to bring up
the heavy artillery so I laid off.

While the girls is seein' what soap and water will do to a pail of
dishes, I released some cigars and us strong men had a even stronger
smoke. The lovely Wilkinson seems to have somethin' on his mind and
says practically nothin', both when he talked and when he didn't. Alex
kids me about my ball team and, finely, the household cares bein'
attended to in the kitchen, we all set sail for the movies.

The wife calls me aside, gimme a kiss and says for me to buy the
tickets. Of course after she done that I don't have to tell you who
pushed the quarters in under the cashier's window. The picture we seen
was one of them forty-eight reel thrillers and was called "Lunatic
Lily's Lover" or somethin' like that. They was a guy killed in every
reel but the first one. They was three killed in that. The picture
must of been made by the local branch of the suicide club, assisted by
a lot of candidates for the insane asylum. I'll tell the world that
the guy which wrote the scenario had at least delirium tremens. The
girls thought it was great, but I knew better and put in my time
figurin' out on the back of a envelope how many games we had to lose to
be in last place by August.

The lovely Wilkinson gets very talkative once inside the theatre. He
starts right in on the picture and claims it's a awful thing. Every
time a guy goes over a cliff or dives off of a bridge and all the
sa