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A LADY DISCREDITS ME
103

"I guess not! Well, you should've seen some of those 'sometimes.' The boy was crazy; I seen it!" In her excitement, she was forgetting her "g's" and the tenses she could speak correctly when she tried to; she was a cabaret Récamier now. "Clean crazy. He kept it under when he was back with his swells and you; but when he was down with us, he blew the lid some distance off, I'm telling you. I made him crazier than most, for he couldn't get me. He thought I'd fall for money. Not me!

"I was glad to get married to a decent man, if he was a bit old; and glad to get away, believe me! Then we made the mistake of comin' back. I didn't want to, as you know; but the boys wanted father and me to cut down expenses. So we had to come. Anyway, with me married and Jerry mixed up with another skirt—and a swell one, too—I figured he'd forget his old grief about me. But you know what he did to his lady friend; well, when he'd made himself all lonely again, he seems to have got me back on his busted brain. Anyway, he sent word to me to come meet him."

"How did he send word?" This was from me.