“Don’t worry about what I am saying. When she returns, I will close my door against her. I’m a good mind to go home right now and get that money out of that sock I been saving and blow it all in, every damn penny.”

“Before I let you do that,” I said, “I’ll treat you to a whole bottle of beer myself. Bartender, set ’em up! And you, I do not want to hear you talking like that just because Joyce is a little piqued.”

“I wish I could peek on her wherever she is at now. Relaxing! I would unlax her.”

“Let that girl relax alone and get herself together, calm her nerves, think things over, and come back refreshed. You’ll be so glad to see her you won’t know what to do.”

“She better let me know where she’s at by Monday morning,” said Simple. “If she do not drop me a line at once now, she will find herself dropped. Joyce is embarrassing me. F. D. thinks I know all about womens, and here I don’t even know where my own woman is at.

“Last night I took F. D. upstairs to see Carlyle who has come back to his wife and baby. I told F. D., ‘Carlyle is a young man a year or two older than yourself. He can give you some good advice which has got me stumped to talk over with you. You been running over to Brooklyn a mighty lot these nights lately, spending time with that keen kitty with the leather belt. Carlyle is a married man. He can tell you how he got married.’”

“‘Midsummer madness,’” I started quoting.

“That’s right,” said Simple. “Now, you take F. D. These young peoples nowadays know a plenty and they act like they knows more. But when you come right down to it, sometimes they don’t know B from bull-foot—especially when it comes to subtracting the result from the cause. Sometimes it does not even take nine months to have the answer on your hands. Then they are surprised. F. D. is at the age where a boy needs somebody to talk to him.”

“Why don’t you talk to him? He seems to respect you.”

“That’s just it. He do respect me. And I don’t know how to talk about them things without using bad words. That is all right amongst grown men. But F. D. ain’t old enough yet to be drafted. Still and yet, he’s old enough to do what the Bible says Adam did—and which has been going on ever since. I don’t know what to say to a young boy at that age. I gets somewhatly embarrassed.”

“So you turn F. D. over to Carlyle for the birds and bees, eh?”