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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 night-club.’

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 taken a hand in this game. If it hadn’t of been my evening off, don’t you see, I wouldn’t have got home till one o’clock or past that in the morning, being on duty. Whereas, seeing it was my evening off, I was back at half past eight.

I was living at the same boarding-house in Bloomsbury what I’d lived at for the past ten years, and when I got there I find her letter shoved half under my door.

I can tell you every word of it. This is how it went:

Darling Uncle Bill,

Don’t be too sorry when you read this. It is nobody’s fault, but I am just tired of everything, and I want to end it all. You have been such a dear to me always that I want you to be good to me now. I should not like Andy to know the truth, so I want you to make it seem as if it had happened naturally. You will do this for me, won’t you? It will be quite easy. By the time you get this, it will be one, and it will all be over, and you can just come up and open the window and let the gas out and then everyone will think I just died naturally. It will be quite easy. I am leaving the door unlocked so that you can get in. I am in the room just above yours. I took it yesterday, so as to be near you. Good-bye, Uncle Bill. You will do it for me, won’t you? I don’t want Andy to know what it really was.

KATIE

That was it, mister, and I tell you it floored me. And then it come to me, kind of as a new idea, that I’d best do something pretty soon, and up the stairs I went quick.

There she was, on the bed, with her eyes closed, and the gas just beginning to get bad.

As I come in, she jumped up, and stood staring at me. I went to the tap, and turned the flow off, and then I gives her a look.

‘Now then,’ I says.

‘How did you get here?’

‘Never mind how I got here. What have you got to say for yourself?’

She just began to cry, same as she used to when she was a kid and someone had hurt her.

‘Here,’ I says, ‘let’s get along out of here, and go where there’s some air to breathe. Don’t you take on so. You come along out and tell me all about it.’

She started to walk to where I was, and suddenly I seen she was limping. So I gave her a hand down to my room, and set her on a chair.

‘Now then,’ I says again.

‘Don’t be angry with me, Uncle Bill,’ she says.

And she looks at me so pitiful that I goes up to her and puts my arm round her and pats her on the back.

‘Don’t you worry, dearie,’ I says, ‘nobody ain’t going to be angry with you. But, for goodness’ sake,’ I says, ‘tell a man why in the name of goodness you ever took and acted so foolish.’

‘I wanted to end it all.’

‘But why?’

She burst out a-crying again, like a kid.

‘Didn’t you read about it in the paper, Uncle Bill?’

‘Read about what in the paper?’

‘My accident. I broke my ankle at rehearsal ever so long ago, practising my new dance. The doctors say it will never be right again. I shall never be able to dance any more. I shall always limp. I shan’t even be able to walk properly. And when I thought of that … and Andy … and everything … I….’