"But--but," stammers Joe. "I can't have you asking favors for me, Gladys, and--and, why New York?"
"Because," she says, "that's where I come from, and I want to look at it again--I'm simply crazy to yell down a dumbwaiter and throw a quarter in my own gas meter!"
Well--that's about all. They had a big weddin' right in the middle of Film City and everybody sent in and bought 'em a present. Potts got a flash at Gladys, moans regretfully and has the ceremony filmed, givin' the result to Joe as a special gift. Of course Gladys got Joe that job. That dame could have got frankfurters and sourkraut in Buckingham Palace! Before they left for New York, I tried Joe out.
"It'll be terrible here, when you're gone!" I says, "because you know more about makin' movies than Rockefeller does about oil."
"No!" he says. "I guess I don't know much about anything!"
I pronounced him cured to myself and shook his hand. The Kid went to the train with him and his bride. I didn't feel up to seein' that guy goin' away with Gladys.
I met the Kid as he was comin' up from the railroad station, and seein' he was laughin', I asked him if the happy pair got off all right.
"Yeh!" he says. "Everything went fine. Me and Miss Vincent waited till the train was pullin' out. Gladys was inside and Joe was standin' on the steps of the Pullman, talkin'. Just before the thing pulled out, I shook Joe's hand and said I hoped he got past in New York, because it was a big burg and a tough one for losers." The Kid stops and laughs some more.
"Sweet Papa!" says the Kid, wipin' his eyes. "Joe's face lights all up and that old glitter comes back in his eyes!
"'Make good?' he yells to me. 'Well, I ought to make good--my father owns half the town, and I was the biggest thing in it when I left!'"
Every time I see one of them big, fat, dignified guys that looks like they have laid somebody eight to five they can go through life without smilin' once, I wonder just how much they'd give in American money to be able to put on a suit of pink pajamas and walk down Fifth Avenue some crowded afternoon, leadin' a green elephant by a string!
I'll bet they's many a bank president, brigadier-general and what not, that would part with their right eye if they could only force themselves to let down for five minutes, can this dignity thing and give a imitation of what a movie comedian thinks is humor. The best proof of this is that the first chance any of them birds gets--_that's just what they do_!
