Read Online Tales From Gavagan's Bar by L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt - Free Book Online Page B

am the judge of how much people drink in Gavagan's, by God; and I keep it a decent place. Anybody that has to insult the customers can take his business somewheres else."
     
                  "I didn't mean nothing," said Mr. Gross, weakly. "I was just thinking of the woman's poor family."
     
                  "Family she has none; but if she had, they would not be poor nor ashamed of her neither. That there's Jocelyn Millard, that writes the religious poetry on the raddio and all. Father McConaghy says it's as good as a sermon. She's been away for a while now, and this is the first I seen her back."
     
                  "The radio, eh?" said Mr. Gross, brightening as he turned to gaze at the poetess again. "Isn't that fine? My wife's cousin knows a man that won a set of dishes on the radio once, but he wasn't married then and had to give them away and the teapot got broke. I'd like to know someone on the radio; maybe with my voice I could get to be one of them announcers."
     
                  The object of their conversation approached the bar and pushed her glass across.
     
                  "Another," she said in a husky voice.

                  "Sure, sure," said Cohan. "Miss Millard, do you know Mr. Gross, here? The more people that meet each other, the better it is for all of them."
     
                  "Pleased to meet you, ma'am," said Gross. "I was just talking to Mr. Cohan about you being in the radio business."
     
                  "How do you do," said Miss Millard. "But I'm not in the radio business."
     
                  "Didn't I tell you?" said Mr. Cohan, stirring vigorously. "She only writes the poetry."
     
                  "Damn the poetry," said Miss Millard.
     
                  "Huh?" said Gross. "Is there something wrong with it, ma'am?"
     
                  "Nothing anyone can help."
     
                  "Don't say that, ma'am. I call to mind when we were having a party at home on a Saturday night once and the toilet broke down and began flooding the whole place out. You wouldn't think anybody could do anything with all the plumbers closed up, but it turned out that my wife's sister's boy friend was studying to be a horse doctor, and he just took off his coat and got to work."
     
                  Miss Millard sipped gloomily, then appeared to make up her mind with a snap.
     
    # ★ #
     
                  All right, I'll tell you [she said] and you just see what you can do, or Mr. Cohan, either. If you have any sense, you'll run a mile from me. It's worse than being a leper, and I made all the trouble for myself, too.
     
                  You know the kind of poems I wri te? They come over the air on the DIT network at the evening hour, mostly; but I sell some of them to papers, too. Inspirational poems, all about God gimme this and God gimme that. Maybe they're not the best poetry in the world, but they do sell, and people write me letters saying they're a help. Even preachers and priests sometimes, and there was one woman who said I'd kept her from committing suicide. If people like my poems and get something out of them that makes life pleasanter, why shouldn't I give them what they want? Why shouldn't I?
     
                  [Gross shrugged his shoulders to indicate that he was not disposed to argue the point.]
     
                  I don't know how it happened, or who did what to me, but now I'm afraid I'll have to go back to schoolteaching. If anyone will give me a job after they find out. You might start mixing me another one, Mr. Cohan; I'll be finished with this by the time you have it ready.
     
                  This all started a few weeks back, when I decided it was time for a vacation, so I packed up and got in my car and drove up into the real old French part of Quebec. Rotten roads