admit you got no faith in your judgment. Better
lay down than call. So I resolve not to say another word to the girl
about Chester, but simply to press the song in on her. Already it had
made her act like a human person. Of course I didn't worry none about
Wilbur. The wisdom of the ages couldn't have done that. But I seen I had
got to have a real first-class human voice in that song, like the one I
had heard in New York City. They'll just have to clench, I think, when
they hear a good A-number-one voice in it.

"Next day I look in on Wilbur and say, 'What about this concert and
musical entertainment the North Side set is talking about giving for the
starving Belgians?'

"'The plans are maturing,' he says, 'but I'm getting up a Brahms
concerto that I have promised to play--you know how terrifically
difficult Brahms is--so the date hasn't been set yet.'

"'Well, set it and let's get to work,' I says. 'There'll be you, and the
North Side Ladies' String Quartet, and Ed Bughalter with a bass solo,
and Mrs. Dr. Percy Hailey Martingale with the "Jewel Song" from Faust,
and I been thinking,' I says, 'that we had ought to get a good
professional lady concert singer down from Spokane.'

"'I'm afraid the expenses would go over our receipts,' says Wilbur, and
I can see him figuring that this concert will cost the Belgians money
instead of helping 'em; so right off I says, 'If you can get a
good-looking, sad-faced contralto, with a low-cut black dress, that can
sing "The Rosary" like it had ought to be sung, why, you can touch me
for that part of the evening's entertainment.'

"Wilbur says I'm too good, not suspicioning I'm just being wily, so he
says he'll write up and fix it. And a couple days later he says the lady
professional is engaged, and it'll cost me fifty, and he shows me her
picture and the dress is all right, and she had a sad, powerful face,
and the date is set and everything.

"Meantime, I keep them two records het up for the benefit of my
reluctant couple: daytime for Nettie--she standing dreamy-eyed while it
was doing, showing she was coming more and more human, understand--and
evenings for both of 'em, when Chester Timmins would call. And Chet
himself about the third night begins to get a new look in his eyes, kind
of absent and desperate, so I thinks this here lady professional will
simply goad him to a frenzy. Oh, we had some sad musical week before
that concert! That was when this crazy Chink of mine got t