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Show A ZONE OF QUIET "You're picking up, Newell. Maybe May-be you've changed boarding places?" asked Sanderson. "No, I wouldn't change for anything. any-thing. I object to learning all over how to pick a new napkin ring out of a bunch of twenty. But I know that I'm getting fatter. It's simply because I'm getting some good solid sleep these fine mornings." "I thought you told me that you couldn't sleep on account of the racket." "My dear boy, that is a thing of the past. Now I sleep as comfortably comfort-ably as polar bear on a chunk of genuine Ice. "Come, tell me the secret of your happy, care free existence. Did the piano player across tho street move out of the neighborhood?" "No, she still lives here, but under un-der cover, so to speak. She certainly certain-ly made life miserable for me all last year. Some days she would begin practicing at A a. m., a few minutes, it seemed to me, after I came home from my engagement at the theater. I have never known just what she hit those piano keys with, whether with her fists or with a ball bat, but she certainly lit where she hit. She would practice scales till I'd ram a pillow Into each ear to get away from this world of poetry and art and music and small potatoes. Along about noon I'd emerge saying to myself, "Surely Miss Hammerflngers has dinged off her digits by now," and then I would put up the front window for fresh air and get instead the snmo old air that sho has been playing ever since the days when sho woro her hair in braids. "Some weeks ago I was out to Billy's place just this side of Elm-hurst. Elm-hurst. He had hardly seated himself at the piano when I heard a' most dismal howling. 'What's that?' I asked. ask-ed. 'Coyotes? "Oh, no,' he said, 'It's Just my collie pup. These melodies make him think of the time when he was but a mere brute. "I'll trade you my new hat for him,' I said. "He took me up on the spot. I brought the beast home, tied him to the front hitching post, labeled him with my old auto sign, License Applied Ap-plied For, and went to bed that night chuckling. "The .next morning when Helen Hammerflngers started her gymnastics gymnas-tics on the keyboard, cunning Carlo was right on the Job. He howled as it his chain would break. The harder she pounded, the louder he hoved. By 9 a. m. he was a fugue and several sev-eral nocturnes ahead. All the neighbors neigh-bors were at the windows listening to the duet. Whenever the piano stopped Carlo clapped on the muffler. muf-fler. At 10 a. m. tho planlste surrendered, sur-rendered, grabbed her hat, and sailed sail-ed down the street mad as a lady hornet. If you want to know what a zone of quiet is, just move into our square." |