"Next day I look in on Wilbur and say, 'What about this concert and
musical entertainment the North Side set is talking about giving for the
starving Belgians?'

"'The plans are maturing,' he says, 'but I'm getting up a Brahms
concerto that I have promised to play--you know how terrifically
difficult Brahms is--so the date hasn't been set yet.'

"'Well, set it and let's get to work,' I says. 'There'll be you, and the
North Side Ladies' String Quartet, and Ed Bughalter with a bass solo,
and Mrs. Dr. Percy Hailey Martingale with the "Jewel Song" from Faust,
and I been thinking,' I says, 'that we had ought to get a good
professional lady concert singer down from Spokane.'

"'I'm afraid the expenses would go over our receipts,' says Wilbur, and
I can see him figuring that this concert will cost the Belgians money
instead of helping 'em; so right off I says, 'If you can get a
good-looking, sad-faced contralto, with a low-cut black dress, that can
sing "The Rosary" like it had ought to be sung, why, you can touch me
for that part of the evening's entertainment.'

"Wilbur says I'm too good, not suspicioning I'm just being wily, so he
says he'll write up and fix it. And a couple days later he says the lady
professional is engaged, and it'll cost me fifty, and he shows me her
picture and the dress is all right, and she had a sad, powerful face,
and the date is set and everything.

"Meantime, I keep them two records het up for the benefit of my
reluctant couple: daytime for Nettie--she standing dreamy-eyed while it