Short Fiction P. G. Wodehouse (good books to read in english .txt) 📖

had the gratitood to forgive and forget and go over and say a civil word to Katie when she come in. But no, he just hung round looking black at all of them; and one night he goes and fairly does it.

The place was full that night, and Katie was there, and the piano going, and everybody enjoying themselves, when the young feller at the piano struck up the tune what Katie danced to in the show. Catchy tune it was. “Lum-tum-tum, tiddle-iddle-um.” Something like that it went. Well, the young feller struck up with it, and everybody begin clapping and hammering on the tables and hollering to Katie to get up and dance; which she done, in an open space in the middle, and she hadn’t hardly started when along come young Andy.

He goes up to her, all jaw, and I seen something that wanted dusting on the table next to ’em, so I went up and began dusting it, so by good luck I happened to hear the whole thing.

He says to her, very quiet, “You can’t do that here. What do you think this place is?”

And she says to him, “Oh, Andy!”

“I’m very much obliged to you,” he says, “for all the trouble you seem to be taking, but it isn’t necessary. MacFarland’s got on very well before your well-meant efforts to turn it into a bear-garden.”

And him coining the money from the supper-custom! Sometimes I think gratitood’s a thing of the past and this world not fit for a self-respecting rattlesnake to live in.

“Andy!” she says.

“That’s all. We needn’t argue about it. If you want to come here and have supper, I can’t stop you. But I’m not going to have the place turned into a nightclub.”

I don’t know when I’ve heard anything like it. If it hadn’t of been that I hadn’t of got the nerve, I’d have give him a look.

Katie didn’t say another word, but just went back to her table.

But the episode, as they say, wasn’t conclooded. As soon as the party she was with seen that she was through dancing, they begin to kick up a row; and one young nut with about an inch and a quarter of forehead and the same amount of chin kicked it up especial.

“No, I say! I say, you know!” he hollered. “That’s too bad, you know. Encore! Don’t stop. Encore!”

Andy goes up to him.

“I must ask you, please, not to make so much noise,” he says, quite respectful. “You are disturbing people.”

“Disturbing be damned! Why shouldn’t she⁠—”

“One moment. You can make all the noise you please out in the street, but as long as you stay in here you’ll be quiet. Do you understand?”

Up jumps the nut. He’d had quite enough to drink. I know, because I’d been serving him.

“Who the devil are you?” he says.

“Sit down,” says Andy.

And the young feller took a smack at him. And the next moment Andy had him by the collar and was chucking him out in a way that would have done credit to a real professional down Whitechapel way. He dumped him on the pavement as neat as you please.

That broke up the party.

You can never tell with restaurants. What kills one makes another. I’ve no doubt that if we had chucked out a good customer from the Guelph that would have been the end of the place. But it only seemed to do MacFarland’s good. I guess it gave just that touch to the place which made the nuts think that this was real Bohemia. Come to think of it, it does give a kind of charm to a place, if you feel that at any moment the feller at the next table to you may be gathered up by the slack of his trousers and slung into the street.

Anyhow, that’s the way our supper-custom seemed to look at it; and after that you had to book a table in advance if you wanted to eat with us. They fairly flocked to the place.

But Katie didn’t. She didn’t flock. She stayed away. And no wonder, after Andy behaving so bad. I’d of spoke to him about it, only he wasn’t the kind of feller you do speak to about things.

One day I says to him to cheer him up, “What price this restaurant now, Mr. Andy?”

“Curse the restaurant,” he says.

And him with all that supper-custom! It’s a rum world!

Mister, have you ever had a real shock⁠—something that came out of nowhere and just knocked you flat? I have, and I’m going to tell you about it.

When a man gets to be my age, and has a job of work which keeps him busy till it’s time for him to go to bed, he gets into the habit of not doing much worrying about anything that ain’t shoved right under his nose. That’s why, about now, Katie had kind of slipped my mind. It wasn’t that I wasn’t fond of the kid, but I’d got so much to think about, what with having four young fellers under me and things being in such a rush at the restaurant that, if I thought of her at all, I just took it for granted that she was getting along all right, and didn’t bother. To be sure we hadn’t seen nothing of her at MacFarland’s since the night when Andy bounced her pal with the small size in foreheads, but that didn’t worry me. If I’d been her, I’d have stopped away the same as she done, seeing that young Andy still had his hump. I took it for granted, as I’m telling you, that she was all right, and that the reason we didn’t see nothing of her was that she was taking her patronage elsewhere.

And then, one evening, which happened to be my evening off, I got a letter, and for ten minutes after I read it I was knocked flat.

You get to believe in fate when you get to be my age, and fate certainly had