AY, why don't you take in the show at the Academy to-night—"The Old Homestead"? … Sure, I used to be strong on the rough stuff, but that was before the Doc sends me off to the
What's the story? Well, I guess it aint no new yarn, but when these old-timers get under y'r shirt, they make a deep dent.
Y'see, it was this way: I've been feeling kinder on the hog for a long time, and I has a gabfest with the Doc. He pokes me a few in the bread-basket, feels me up a bit, holds hands awhile, makes me stick out me tongue—and says:
"The back-to-nature cure f'r yours, m'son."
"Huh?" I asks, puzzled.
"The country," he wises me. "Babblin' brooks an' bosky dells an' such."
"Y're kiddin' me?"
"On the level," he insists, earnest-like. "And y'd better make it soon. Y're run down. Things are lookin' bad—"
"Yeh!" I butts in. "Rotten! Here's me wit' two of the best hundred-and-twenty-two pounders in the city, and not a fight f'r a month. Honest, Doc, things is fierce!"
"I aint talkin' about business," he says, peevish. "I'm gassin' about y'r health."
'M wise finally, an' the next day I pulls out on the Central. My ticket expires at a one-hoss burg called Harleyville, and I takes a hack f'r the farm he'd recommended as training quarters—no taxi being in sight. That was night. The next morning I lamps the outfit for the first time.
Say, on the dead, that was some good-looking piece of scenery, rollin' up and down like the surf at Coney, and cows and chickens and pigs and geese—and a little blonde queen all dolled up like the first act of that there same "Old Homestead."
Yeh, it was me f'r her right from the gong, though she never could see me with field-glasses. I runs across her funny. I'm strollin' through a big field and climbs a fence. When I gets half-way over I slips and falls. I swears aplenty, and then I hear some one laughin', sorter half shocked and half tickled. I looks up—an' there she is!
She aint no more'n about five foot one, and'd enter the ring ten pounds below the flyweight limit in proper trim. Here she is, dressed in this pink-and-white stuff, big bonnet hat, dish o' corn under the left wing and the right hand busy handing it out to the hungriest bunch of poultry I ever seen.
I gets up, brushes my clothes and stares for a minute. She quits feedin' the chickens, an' she stares at me too. Shoot me dead if she aint got the cutest lamps—aw, say; you've seen 'em, aint you? All blue and big and round—gee! It made funny little shivers run up and down me back, and I started to think this back-to-nature business was pretty good stuff after all.
Then I snatches off me lid.
"Beg pardon," I spars, "but I fell down—accidental."
She looks at me to see am I kiddin' her, and then she laughs again.
"I see," she bubbles. An' off she goes for another spiel.
"Seein' it pleases you," I sez, "I'll do it again." I starts to climb the fence, and she calls to me.
"Never mind, Mister Davis," she says. "Once was enough. I forget.
I'm surprised that she's got my monaker, and I asks her about it.
"Doctor Marchale telegraphs y'r comin'," she says.
"Wasn't that nice of him?"
"Y'r from Noo York?"
"That's me," I answers.
"An' y'r up here f'r y'r health?"
"That's my Bertillon, all right."
She eyes me for a second, and I see that she don't get me f'r soup.
"Well?" I asks, tickled.
"I hope you'll improve—" And she actually blushes, though Lord knows what for.
"You hang out here?"
"Yes—sir."
"I'll improve," I says, pronto.
"Oh!" And she blushes again.
TRIES my darndest to think of something else to make her blush, she looks so nice that way, but the only other things I can think of that'd make her do that—well, I keeps 'em under my hat.
"We haven't been interduced," I says, bold. "My name's George
Davis."
A little dimple peeks outa her left cheek f'r a minute.
"I'm Phyllis Barrow," she counters.
"Pleased to meetcha!" I blurts, an' we shakes hands. Say. she's got the softest mitt I ever handled. But she's got a grip, too; an' she looks me right in the eyes when she shakes.
"I hope we'll be friends," she feints.
"We will," I comes back, tryin' to look her square in the eyes, and failin'.—I'm groggy by that time, y'see,—"or it wont be my fault."