'And let me state the official position of the United States Government, which it is your patriotic duty to follow, vis à vis this gendeman.'
'You mean that drunk in the comic-opera uniform?'
'Madame, you refer to His Excellency General Francisco Hermanez, El Presidente of San Sebastian. While it might reasonably be presumed from the way he smells that El Presidente has had a drink or two, I am sure that you will agree that it behooves us all to refrain from suggesting he's drunk.'
'What's he doing in here ?' she asked.
'I told you, the same thing you are,' Horsey said. 'Waiting for good news from the operating room. His grandson is in there.'
'I see,' she said. 'My husband is in there. I have every hope, since I have secured the best possible medical care for him—'
‘You didn't secure it - you got it, but you didn't get it,' Horsey said.
'I beg your pardon?'
'Your husband's being cut by the two best surgeons around,' Horsey said. 'But you didn't get them for him. Aloysius Grogarty got them.'
'How dare you!' she began, but then she collapsed. This time, the tears weren't discreet and lady-like. She cried like a frightened woman. Horsey's anger immediately vanished, and he tried to do the best thing he could do for her, but she refused his offer of his Old White Stagg Blended Kentucky Bourbon.
The door opened. Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley looked up to see her son, in surgical greens, standing there beside a nurse similarly attired.
'You can relax, mother,' Dr. Sattyn-Whiley said. 'Dad'll be all right. We just came from the recovery room. He won't be flying any more for a while, but he'll be all right.'
'Thank God!' Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said. She turned to Horsey. 'I think I will have a little sip now, if you don't mind.' She turned up Horsey's flask and took several good pulls.
'And who, might I inquire, is this young woman?' she asked. She sounded like the Mrs. C. Edward Sattyn-Whiley of a few days before.
'Mother, this is Betsy Boobs,' Dr. Sattyn-Whiley said. 'Or at least that's the name she used when she was the headliner at Sadie Shapiro's Strip Joint.'
'And what, Cornelius Dear, may I ask, are you telling me this for?'
'Because I'm going to marry her,' Dr. Sattyn-Whiley said. 'Just as soon as Dad can stand up with me. I thought you'd like to know.'
Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said nothing.
'We're ready for you, Doctor,' a nurse said, putting her head in the door.
'Where are you going now ?' Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley asked.
'I'm going to repair an inguinal hernia,' he said. 'On a friend of mine who's a balalaika player.'
'My grandson,' General El Presidente Francisco Hermanez said.
'Take it from me, Francisco,' Horsey said. 'If Hawkeye and Trapper John let this kid cut your grandson, he's all right.'
'He is, after all,' Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said, 'my son.' She took another pull at Horsey's flask. ‘I suppose that if a chief of state can endure having a balalaika player for a grandson, I can learn to live with a terpsichorean ecdysiast for a daughter-in-law.'
The door burst open again.
'Did I hear those glorious words, "terpsichorean ecdysiast"?' Matthew Q. Framingham inquired. 'Where?'
'Will you, for the last time, knock it off, you stripper freak, you ?' Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov said.
'My God!' Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said. 'I recognize you from your photographs. You're Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov !'
'How perceptive of you,' Boris replied.
'The Grand Duke Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov!'
She did a very nice curtsey. 'Your Highness!'
'Do me a favor, lady,' Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov said. 'Hand me Horsey's flask before you fall down doing that and break it.'
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