Gullibles Travels | Page 3

clo'es when the bell rung and there was the Hatches.
Well, Hatch didn't have no more evenin' dress suit on than a kewpie. I could see his pants under his overcoat and they was the same old bay pants he'd wore the day he got mad at his kid and christened him Kenneth. And his shoes was a last year's edition o' the kind that's supposed to give your feet a chance, and his feet had of been the kind that takes chances they was two or three places where they could of got away without much trouble.
I could tell from the expression on Mrs. Hatch's face when she seen our make-up that we'd crossed her. She looked about as comf'table as a Belgium.
"Oh!" she says. "I didn't think you'd dress up."
"We thought you would," says my Frau.
"We!" I says. "Where do you get that 'we'?"
"If it ain't too late we'll run in and change," says my Missus.
"Not me," I says. "I didn't go to all this trouble and expense for a splash o' gravy. When this here uniform retires it'll be to make room for pyjamas."
"Come on!" says Hatch. "What's the difference? You can pretend like you ain't with us."
"It don't really make no difference," says Mrs. Hatch.
And maybe it didn't. But we all stood within whisperin' distance of each other on the car goin' in, and if you had a dollar for every word that was talked among us you couldn't mail a postcard from Hammond to Gary. When we got off at Congress my Missus tried to thaw out the party.
"The prices is awful high, aren't they?" she says.
"Outrageous," says Mrs. Hatch.
Well, even if the prices was awful high, they didn't have nothin' on our seats. If I was in trainin' to be a steeple jack I'd go to grand op'ra every night and leave Hatch buy my ticket. And where he took us I'd of been more at home in overalls and a sport shirt.
"How do you like Denver?" says I to the Missus, but she'd sank for the third time.
"We're safe here," I says to Hatch. "Them French guns can't never reach us. We'd ought to brought more bumbs."
"What did the seats cost?" I says to Hatch.
"One-fifty," he says.
"Very reasonable," says I. "One o' them aviators wouldn't take you more than half this height for a five-spot."
The Hatches had their overcoats off by this time and I got a look at their full costume. Hatch had went without his vest durin' the hot months and when it was alongside his coat and pants it looked like two different families. He had a pink shirt with prune-colored horizontal bars, and a tie to match his neck, and a collar that would of took care of him and I both, and them shoes I told you about, and burlap hosiery. They wasn't nothin' the matter with Mrs. Hatch except she must of thought that, instead o' dressin' for the op'ra, she was gettin' ready for Kenneth's bath.
And there was my Missus, just within the law. and me all spicked and spanned with my soup and fish and gravy!
Well, we all set there and tried to get the focus till about a half-hour after the show was billed to commence, and finally a Lilliputhian with a match in his hand come out and started up the orchestry and they played a few o' the hits and then the lights was turned out and up went the curtain.
Well, sir, you'd be surprised at how good we could hear and see after we got used to it. But the hearin' didn't do us no good--that is, the words part of it. All the actors had been smuggled in from Europe and they wasn't none o' them that could talk English. So all their songs was gave in different languages and I wouldn't of never knew what was goin' on only for Hatch havin' all the nerve in the world.
After the first act a lady that was settin' in front of us dropped somethin' and Hatch stooped over and picked it up, and it was one these here books they call a liberetto, and it's got all the words they're singin' on the stage wrote out in English.
So the lady begin lookin' all over for it and Hatch was goin' to give it back because he thought it was a shoe catalogue, but he happened to see at the top of it where it says "Price 25 Cents," so he tossed it in his lap and stuck his hat over it. And the lady kept lookin' and lookin' and finally she turned round and looked Hatch right in the eye, but he dropped down inside his collar and left her wear herself out. So when she'd gave up I says somethin' about