“Joyce says, ‘It’s been too long already. You know I wanted to get married last June. All my friends are talking about how you been stringing me along. They think you don’t take me serious.’

“‘Look here,’ I says to her, ‘if I don’t get the rest of that money together by Labor Day, baby, I am going to borrow it—some maybe from F. D. who is working like a man, and some from my best bar-buddy, who will do me a favor, I know. Meaning, of course, you.”

“Meaning me!” I exclaimed. “You realize, I suppose, that I have obligations too, though I may not be so vocal about mine.”

“I didn’t know you’re taking singing lessons,” said Simple. “Are you a baritone—or a nary tone?”

“I can’t carry a tune,” I said, “so I’m not taking vocal lessons. But I do have other things to do with my money.”

“Whatever you’ve got to do with your money, I know you’ll lend me Twenty or Thirty if push comes to shove. I got to get together One Hundred and Thirty-Three Dollars and Thirty-three and One-Third Cents to make up my share of that Four Hundred Dollar divorce. I writ Isabel I would send it soon. I am getting tired of them proceedings dragging on forever. Nothing but money is holding things up. Joyce is getting ready to go on her vacation and I want to have them divorce papers to show her when she gets back.”

“Where is Joyce going this year?” I asked.

“She will not tell me,” said Simple. “Joyce is acting salty about almost everything this summer. But I expect she will go over to Jersey and spend it with her friends and her godchild. She is crazy about that little varmint. Joyce pretends like she wanted to spend her vacation with me—that is, had we been married. But she knows I don’t get off at the same time she does. Her vacation comes in August, and mine is always in September.

“Sne says, ‘Any man with any gumption could arrange it so he’s off the same time as his wife,’ she says, ‘and if you don’t, I will, if and when we are ever united. I will go down and see your boss myself.’

“I says, ‘Joyce, it is not that I don’t want to. It’s just, what’s the use? You have told me yourself morals is your middle name, and you would not go nowhere for no two weeks with a single man—nor a married one neither that you are not married to yourself. That is why I did not get my vacation changed.’