For some time Sutphen had been in proud possession of a Literary
Club, the leading spirit of which organization was the lively and
irrepressible wife of the chief banker of the town.
People in Sutphen, including her family, her followers and, last
but not least, her husband, never knew what Mrs. Chauncey Stratton
was going to do next for the benefit or entertainment of their
lives. She rushed them from bazaar to out-door play, from concerts
to cooking classes. She and her coterie of womenfolk had descended
upon the editor of the principal newspaper, and made him give them
one issue of his journal to be edited by them for charity. And
about six months before she had instituted a series of fortnightly
meetings, at which men and women were to meet for discussion of books
and current events. After the president (of course, Mrs. Chauncey
Stratton) had accomplished the matter of reading before the assembled
club two or three papers embodying her own views of given subjects,
and was getting a little tired of it, her friends began dimly to
feel that something new would shortly be in order to brighten these
occasions--something fresh and metropolitan, _fin de siècle_, that
would carry Sutphen again up on the wave of novelty.
But like all great leaders, Mrs. Chauncey Stratton had malcontents
in her camp--close to her person--sharing in her daily councils. The
chief complaint made in vulgar parlance by these unsatisfied ones was
that they were tired of being bossed.
The matter was under discussion one morning in the cozy library of
the secretary of the club, a well-to-do spinster, Miss Cornelia
Bennett, whose claim to literary cousinship was based upon
substantial grounds. For some years she had been in the habit of
sending slips of linen cloth to authors in America and Europe, with
the request that they would inscribe thereon their names in pencil.
These autographs, duly returned to and “backstitched” in color by
Cornelia, were then assembled in a sort of “crazy quilt,” and sold
for the benefit of a hospital for incurables. After this signal
success in the world of letters, Miss Bennett had been elected
without a dissenting voice to be Mrs. Stratton’s second in command.
She was a meek, ashen-hued female, who, to all appearance, accepted
it as her manifest destiny to walk in Mrs. Stratton’s tracks, never
dreaming of such defiance as pushing ahead of her, or crossing
her line of march. But, in reality, while engaged in covering for
distribution among the members of the club the batch of new books
ordered by Mrs. Stratton from New York, a strange spirit of revolt
was kindling in her flat chest. Aiding Miss Bennett in her work, sat
Mrs. Mark Grindstone, a large, dull, catarrhal lady, chosen to serve
as treasurer of their organization--chiefly because she lived in a
large, dull house, was sustained by a large, dull husband, and wore
to church on Sundays a black velvet cloak bursting with jet beads and
bugles at every pore.
Dull as Mrs. Grindstone was, she yet possessed the spirit of the
traditional worm. “Of what use is it,” she asked herself, “to wear
the handsomest cloak in Sutphen, if one is always to be ordered to
the right about by Annetta Stratton?”
And “Why have I been in correspondence with the most prominent
brain-workers of two hemispheres,” wondered Cornelia, “if here I am
actually afraid to portion out the books before Annetta Stratton
comes? If we had only a chance!” she murmured, making common cause
with Mrs. Grindstone, “to show her that when called upon for
independent action, we can be her equals in success.”
“We will make a chance,” said Mrs. Grindstone, after clearing her
throat, rather unpleasantly, Cornelia thought. “What Annetta does not
like to think is that other people can do things without her telling
them how. It would be a good plan to keep quiet and go ahead, and do
some big thing exactly as she means to do it--on the same scale, in
every way.”
“Exactly!” said Cornelia, with animation, as she wrestled with the
crackly brown paper enshrouding the last book of her pile. “One such
lesson would be enough for Annetta.”
“Just so,” said Mrs. Grindstone, fairly slapping her last label into
place.
“Look here, girls,” interposed old Mrs. Bennett, who always read
her morning’s paper from the rising to the going down of its varied
information; “fine times have come to Sutphen. Here’s a city caterer
set up in that built-over block on Main Street, where Blink’s
shoe-store used to be before the fire. There’s nothing he doesn’t
offer to furnish to customers--bread, rolls, patty shells, ice-creams
(French and American), birthday cakes, weddin’ cakes, salads,
cotillon favors, Jack Horner pies--”
[Illustration: “AN OPPORTUNITY TO DECK OUT HER BOARD WITH AN
EFFECT.”]
“You don’t say so?” interpolated Mrs. Grindstone with housekeeperish
relish.
“Yes; and he undertakes to serve ‘dinners, luncheons, teas, and
receptions with glass, silverware, and elegant services of china,
competent waiters and chefs, awnings, camp-chairs, crash, tables,
decorations--all in first-class style!’”
“For all the world as they do it in the city,” exclaimed Miss
Cornelia, excitedly. “Mother, it does look as if Providence had
rolled a stone out of our pathway. Everybody knows we could have had
just as fine parties as Annetta Stratton if we’d only not had to ask
her how to set about givin’ ’em. And so could you, Mrs. Grindstone.
Your house is two feet wider than Annetta’s, four rooms on a floor,
and splendid chandeliers in every room. Just the place for an evening
reception, like the one I went to at Professor Slocum’s in New York.”
“I have often thought of it,” sighed Mrs. Grindstone. “Of course,
there’d be some trouble to get Mr. Grindstone into it. He’s sort
o’ set in his ways, and thinks it a sin to light more than one gas
burner in a room. But we might get over _him_, if there was only any
excuse to give a party--any brides or explorers or great folks that
we knew, coming to town, that had to be entertained.”
“That’s it,” said Miss Cornelia. “We are as dull as ditchwater in
Sutphen--unless Annetta stirs us up,” she added, reluctantly.
At this moment, enter Mrs. Chauncey Stratton, plump, rustling,
well-dressed, with red cheeks like a china doll, self-satisfaction in
every line of her face, in every movement of her person. At the bare
sight of her the two conspirators shrunk into their shells. Old Mrs.
Bennett, who had returned to the perusal of a column devoted to the
wants of domestic service, alone preserved her equilibrium.
“My dear girls,” exclaimed the oracle, dropping into her chair at the
literary table, “if I am late, put it down to the claims of excessive
correspondence. And as I see you’ve finished with the books, let me
lose no time in informing you that I have just had the good fortune
to conclude successfully a negotiation for a lecture before our club
from no less a literary light than Timothy Bludgeon, who is at the
---- Hotel in New York.”
“Bludgeon, the English author!” replied Miss Cornelia, faintly.
“Not that I’ve much opinion of his works, since he refused me his
autograph for my quilt, and even sent me a very tart letter through
his secretary. But, still, he is the lion of the day.”
“Precisely,” observed Mrs. Stratton calmly; “so I made up my mind to
get him--and I did!”
Mrs. Grindstone made a series of muffled sounds that might have been
applause. In her heart she was struck with jealous indignation.
Quick as a flash she and Cornelia saw open before them another vista
in which Annetta would walk glorified, they remaining part of the
inconspicuous crowd ranged on either side of her.
“I asked him to come for our meeting on the fifteenth,” remarked Mrs.
Stratton, with the same exasperating composure born of certainty.
“And he could just fit it in on his way to Boston. He will arrive on
the 11 A.M. train on the fifteenth, and leave next morning at the
same time, thus allowing to Sutphen just twenty-four hours. I have
decided to give him a dinner in the evening, and to change the hour
for the lecture to the afternoon.”
“Such assurance!” said both satellites internally. But they only
murmured, “Splendid!” “Just like you, Annetta,” and the like.
“Of course, you and dear Mr. Grindstone will be included in my
dinner list,” went on Mrs. Stratton, addressing her now speechless
treasurer. “And you, Cornelia, will pair with old Major Gooch.
Sixteen I can seat easily, all choice spirits, and the rest of the
club will have to be satisfied with an introduction to Bludgeon over
a cup of tea at five o’clock. Mr. Bludgeon will, I fancy, see that
Sutphen is not so far behind New York in her style of doing things.”
“And what will the lecture be about?” ventured Cornelia, more than
anything else to cover her own pique.
“Oh, that is of no consequence! Readings from his own works,
possibly. But the name of Bludgeon is enough. It will exhaust a good
deal of the reserve fund of the club to pay him his price, but I
felt sure we could make that all right, Mrs. Grindstone. That I had
decided it is best would, of course, be sufficient for the club.”
And the treasurer was to have no voice in this, her own especial
branch of service! No wonder Mrs. Grindstone’s spirit rose! Old Mrs.
Bennett, breaking in upon the conversation to read aloud an obituary
notice striking her fancy, effected a happy diversion.
From that date Mrs. Stratton, absorbed in her own ambitious plans for
a feast to the English author that should be described in the local
prints, and perchance quoted in metropolitan news columns, saw but
little of her two friends. It was observed by some lookers-on that
Cornelia Bennett was seen moving about the streets with animation,
paying frequent visits to the new caterer, Simonson, and preserving
withal an air of pleasing mystery. Other people saw good Mrs.
Grindstone going hither and thither in much the same way. And putting
two and two together, Sutphen decided that there was to be at least
a “chicken salad and oyster spread” in store for the members of the
Literary Club, following the appearance on their platform of the
great man, Timothy Bludgeon. The unliterary portion of Sutphen licked
its chops at the suggestion!
But a week before the appointed time, out came a genuine surprise.
Two sets of cards were issued simultaneously. One from Mrs. and Miss
Bennett, inviting their friends to meet Mr. Bludgeon at luncheon
on the fifteenth; the other stating that Mr. and Mrs. Grindstone
would be “At Home” on the evening of the same day, at half-past ten
o’clock, with the additional words, “To meet Mr. Bludgeon” inscribed
across the tops!
Where now was the wind to fill Mrs. Stratton’s sails? In vain might
she whistle for it, when her lion was due to roar at two banquets
besides her own in the self-same day. And worse than all, Cornelia
Bennett, in undertaking to give this ridiculous luncheon of hers,
would actually take precedence in point of time of Mrs. Chauncey
Stratton! Of course the affair would be a sad failure. Cornelia knew
little, her mother less, of the customs of entertaining in modern
society. Theirs would be homely doings. Turkey with cranberry sauce,
for example; jellies in tall glasses set around a china _compotier_
of floating island; cakes, big and little. No lobster _farcie_, no
mushroom on toast, French chops, birds, tongue in aspic, salads,
ices--such as Mrs. Stratton would have ordered. Mrs. Grindstone’s
festivity would be--equally, of course--on the same old-fashioned
lines. Oyster stews and molds of ice-cream, the predominating element
of the table. A smell of fried oysters enveloping all. Oh! Annetta
well knew the sort of thing to expect. She pitied poor Mr. Bludgeon
for falling into the hands of these stupid, pushing women, who were
not satisfied to sit still and see her take the field of Sutphen’s
hospitality to distinguished strangers. One thought occurred to
her, to fill Annetta’s soul with consolation! The weak spot in
Sutphen’s domestic panoply, as known to all Sutphen’s housekeepers,
was the general prevalence of plain white or old willow-pattern
china on the shelves. Most of Sutphen’s lords and masters preferred
these varieties of porcelain, and had set their feet down upon any
suggestion of change. Strange to say, even the amenable Mr. Chauncey
Stratton had once asserted himself so far as to declare he preferred
to eat his meals from the dishes he had been accustomed to ever
since his wife and he had set up housekeeping. This was the crumpled
roseleaf in Mrs. Chauncey Stratton’s couch of down. That her set
of white porcelain rejoiced in gilded edges, while those of other
people were plain, gave her but limited satisfaction. For two years
she had been bending every energy of her mind toward securing a set
of Royal Meissen--“onion pattern”--that she had seen in a famous
shop in New York. For two years Mr. Chauncey Stratton had resisted
her. His attitude was to be accounted for only by the saying of old
Mrs. Bennett, “The very best and most biddable of husbands has his
obstinate spot, my dear; and when a woman runs afoul of it, she might
as well give up.”
Of late, coincidently with the threatened dinner to Mr. Timothy
Bludgeon, Mrs. Stratton had seen a ray of light pierce the darkness
surrounding this question of china for the table. In investigating
the resources of Simonson, the New York _restaurateur_, her eyes had
sparkled at the discovery in the rear of his premises of an entire
service of “onion pattern” Meissen--or at least a good imitation of
that desired original.
What an opportunity was here to deck out her board with an “effect”
in porcelain of the latter-day style she aspired to introduce into
Sutphen.
Little by little, the wily caterer had induced her to trust the whole
thing into his hands. In cases where Simonson undertook to serve
the feast throughout, it was his custom, he said, to supply also
the table service, china, silver, dishes, candelabra, rose-colored
candles with shades to match, side-dishes for bonbons--all. Under
these conditions he guaranteed that Mrs. Stratton’s dinner should
be the finest ever seen in Sutphen. And thus it came to pass that
with a heart lightened of responsibility, but weighted with some
apprehension as to the amount of the final bill, Mrs. Stratton had
tripped away from Simonson’s. Her last word, an afterthought upon the
sidewalk, which she returned to the shop to deliver, was to enjoin
upon the glib caterer absolute silence regarding every detail of her
arrangements.
[Illustration: “MR. BLUDGEON HAD BETTER BE READ THAN SEEN.”]
When the day arrived that was to see the triplicated entertainment
of the Englishman, Sutphen was at fever-heat. So much had popular
imagination expected of the object of all these cares, it was
a distinct disappointment when a solemn little black-a-vised man
carrying an American “dress-suit” case, stepped out of the omnibus
of the Dixon House and requested of the clerk of that hostelry one
of his one-dollar rooms. Barring a further demand for hot water in
a jug--which the bell boy took to indicate some intention toward a
private brew of punch--there was nothing to distinguish the great
genius from an ordinary commercial traveler. Some enterprising
spirits who had been hanging around the hotel corridor to see this
arrival, went home and confided to wives and daughters their opinion
that Mr. Bludgeon had better be read than seen. And these ladies who
for days had been conning well-thumbed volumes of his writings sighed
the sigh of discomfiture--feeling rather glad, however, that certain
entertainers who were at that moment yearning for his arrival, were
destined to share their disillusionment. Just before the arrival
of her twelve guests for luncheon, Miss Bennett received a hasty
note from Mrs. Stratton, expressing deepest regret that her fatigue
resulting from necessary cares of state and home (of which naturally
there was no one to relieve _her_) would prevent her from being
present.
“‘A positively raging headache,’ she says,” remarked Cornelia,
compressing her lips. “Never mind, mother; I don’t care. I’ll send
right over and fill up with little Miss James, the elocution teacher.
She is pretty and clever, and can talk up to Annetta any day, if she
only gets the chance. And if you’ll believe _me_, mother, it’s not so
much headache the matter with Annetta as vexation because I’m to skim
the cream off the milk pan first. Good gracious! I’m tired to death
myself, but I’d rather die than give up now.”
Curiosity among Miss Bennett’s _invités_ was fully sated when, upon
the arrival of the guest of honor, luncheon was at once announced,
and they filed into the well-remembered dining-room, where they had
of old partaken of feasts of the frizzled beef and scrambled egg
description. Here, _mirabile dictu!_ was a board set out in modern
conventional fashion--a silver wine-cooler full of roses in the
center, silver dishlets holding salted almonds, bonbons and little
cakes around it; at each cover a name card, napkin, glass for claret,
another for sauterne, and still another for sherry, setting off a
plate of blue Meissen porcelain!
So far Mr. Bludgeon had said little beside “hum!” and “ha!” He had
devoured his bread and bouillon in silence, and had drank a glass of
white wine; but now he bestowed upon the listening public his first
connected utterance:
“Hum! ha! very fair imitation,” he said to his hostess, turning his
plate upside down to gaze upon the trade-mark on the bottom. “We
use this kind of thing in our own house for every day. Perhaps you
knew--but it may be only chance--that this is my favorite pattern in
china. Looks clean and tidy somehow, so I tell my wife.”
Sustained by this mark of approval, Miss Bennett inwardly blessed
Simonson, who, looking unconscious in an evening dress suit,
was occupied at the side table, in dispensing platters of fish
croquettes to his two subordinates to serve. She only wished that
Annetta Stratton might have been near enough to hear. The rest
of the meal, whisked along expeditiously by the trained minions,
went so fast, that Miss Bennett could hardly believe her good luck
when all was over. True to the instincts of more artless days,
she had some thoughts of putting on her bonnet and running out
to talk it over with Annetta. But her feet ached, her dress felt
too tight, her mother was fretting over the loss of both pairs of
spectacles, Simonson’s men were overrunning everything, Mr. Bludgeon
had gone away without more than the scantest recognition of her
personality--so she went up to her bedroom and had a hearty, nervous
cry.
In the Lyceum Hall that afternoon, where the literary club met at 4
P.M. for the “lecture,” everybody was buzzing over the reports of the
Bennetts’ swell luncheon. Mrs. Chauncey Stratton, who had insisted
upon calling at the Dixon House to fetch Mr. Bludgeon to the hall in
her own carriage, did not arrive till too late to hear the gossip.
Just before the solemn little man stepped upon the platform, the
great lady of Sutphen passed up the middle aisle, wearing a bonnet
with plumes turning to all points of the compass, a trailing skirt
of rich satin, a jet cuirass, and a large bouquet of violets in the
bosom of her gown. Smiling, nodding on all sides with conscious
pride, this patron of letters took her seat beside Mrs. Mark
Grindstone.
“Seems to me you’ve ‘picked up’ since lunch time,” observed that
lady, in her customary muffled tones.
“I _do_ feel better,” said Mrs. Stratton, unable to cease bowing,
although in conversation with her friend. “So you were at poor
Cornelia’s little affair? Do tell me how it went off.”
“Six courses--three wines--the whole thing served by
Simonson--couldn’t have been better done,” answered Mrs. Grindstone,
lightly.
“Simonson?” The shot had gone home.
“Mr. Bludgeon was most agreeable. He particularly noticed the table
service, and seemed so pleased,” went on Mrs. Grindstone, who had a
long score to settle. “But hush! Here he comes. What do you suppose
he is going to read?”
“Didn’t you see the program?” asked Annetta in a chilly tone. “It was
settled with me, by letter. In fact I selected the extracts from his
own works, and it will be sure to be satisfactory to all.”
We pass over the somewhat subduing effect upon a large mixed
audience, alien to him by birth and training, of the Englishman’s
recital of his own gems of thought. The usual frost accompanying
this species of entertainment was deepened while his tragic scenes
and interludes were rehearsed successively. Some members of the Club
were rash enough to whisper between themselves that the entertainment
wasn’t worth the appropriation from their treasury required to meet
its cost.
During the “tea” with introductions, that followed, Mrs. Stratton
again rose to the occasion. As the fairy godmother of Genius she was
immense. But Genius remained from first to last unsmiling. Life was
real, life was earnest to him during that episode of American homage.
Seated at Mrs. Stratton’s right hand, at dinner in her pleasant
dining-room, Mr. Bludgeon, in evening dress, unfolding his napkin,
looked almost amiable. When he caught sight of the soup plate
succeeding the one on which his oysters had been served, his face
actually expanded into a smile.
“Very nice, very nice, upon my word,” he said, indicating the object
before him with a condescending wave of his hand. “I had always been
told you Americans do things in very lavish style, but, this, really,
is more than I could have expected, don’t you know?”
Annetta was radiant, although she could not exactly understand why
her guest’s gratitude for courtesy extended took this form. Evidently
Simonson’s china, silver, roses, bonbons, decorations, were on a
scale surpassing anything in Bludgeon’s previous experience of
America. She felt she could afford then and there to forgive Cornelia
Bennett for having had Simonson for lunch.
The dinner, rather a weight upon the Sutphenites, dragged heavily
along, but it ended at last, and after coffee and cigars (Simonson’s
cigars!) the gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room.
“I am sorry to say,” explained Mrs. Stratton to her guest-in-chief,
“that as we in Sutphen keep rather early hours, the reception given
for you at my friend Mrs. Grindstone’s will have already begun. Mr.
and Mrs. Grindstone left some time ago, with apologies to you. It
is too bad that we should have to deprive ourselves of you; but I
hope you will not quite forget our home and our little efforts to be
agreeable.”
“No, I shall not, by George,” exclaimed the author, who had become
a trifle more relaxed; “and when I tell them at home about it, they
will hardly believe me, don’t you know!”
This put the apex upon Mrs. Stratton’s pyramid of joy. In her own
carriage, the author seated beside her, facing her husband and
Cornelia Bennett, they drove to Mrs. Grindstone’s house on the
outskirts of the town.
The most novel revelation of Mrs. Grindstone’s party, at first
sight, was that all the gas jets in the house were lighted and
blazing--reckless of the monthly gas bill. This was something
unprecedented, as also the cloak-room (Simonson’s invention), the
white-capped maids (Simonson’s), and the four pieces of music hidden
by Simonson in a bower of palms on the stairway. Only the familiar
stooping figure of old Mr. Grindstone in his worn frock coat with a
large new white silk tie, brought the public to a realizing sense
of where they were. If Simonson could have tucked away the host into
the hall closet, along with superfluous wraps, umbrellas, and old
overshoes, that functuary would have been very much relieved.
Mrs. Grindstone, on the contrary, who might always be reckoned upon
to come out strong in the matter of finery, wore a brave new gown of
black silk and net, upon which had been let loose a whole collection
of green beaded butterflies. The splendor of this reality at once
effaced the tradition of the velvet cloak. Mrs. Grindstone’s flaxen
gray hair strained to the summit of her head, was there surmounted by
an aigrette of green feathers, caught by a diamond brooch. Directly
she saw her, Mrs. Stratton knew why her friend had hurried home at
the conclusion of the dinner. Mrs. Grindstone had not been willing
to expend the first blush of success of such a toilette upon another
woman’s entertainment.
“Isn’t she splendid?” whispered Cornelia. “No such dressing has ever
been seen in Sutphen, in my time.”
“If I didn’t feel sure Mr. Bludgeon would think it overdone,” said
Annetta, shrugging.
But she was herself impressed, and greatly. The revolt of Cornelia
and Mrs. Grindstone from her rule; their blossoming forth with all
this magnificence of a day; the fact that they would henceforth stand
side by side with _her_ in the reminiscences of how Sutphen welcomed
Mr. Timothy Bludgeon to its Literary bosom, made Annetta smart. The
one consoling thought was that Mr. Bludgeon had told her his people
at home would not believe him when he described to them her dinner.
“Now for the fried oysters and ice cream,” thought Mrs. Chauncey
Stratton when, later on, old Mr. Grindstone offered his arm to her to
follow Mrs. Grindstone and Mr. Bludgeon into supper.
Here a new surprise--one greater than all the rest--awaited her.
Little tables, an innovation undreamt of in simple Sutphen, were
dotting the whole room. At the chief one of these, the two leading
couples, flanked by Cornelia Bennett and Major Gooch, were placed.
In a trice, that indefatigable Simonson had begun the service of a
supper in courses, closely resembling Miss Cornelia Bennett’s lunch.
Annetta could have cried with annoyance. Not only were the dishes,
the silver, the candelabra, and all the rest, just what had twice
already that day appeared before the Englishman--but the china--the
imitation “onion pattern”--was identically the same.
Mr. Bludgeon, when this latter fact became manifest to his
observation, smiled for the second time in Sutphen. It was not, at
best, a gay, hilarious, or even a complaisant smile; but a reluctant
smile of flattered vanity impossible to mistake. Presently, when they
called upon him for a speech, he arose holding in his hand a glass
of Simonson’s (American) champagne. What he said, preliminary to the
gist of his remarks, Mrs. Stratton hardly understood. Her brain was
tingling with vexation, she even snapped at Cornelia in an undertone,
and fairly turned the cold shoulder on Mrs. Grindstone. When she
could at last control herself sufficiently to be able to listen, the
author had reached the climax of his sentences, and Mrs. Stratton
was rewarded for all her labors in behalf of the Literary Club, by
hearing this:
“Before I came to this country,” said the solemn little man, “I may
have had doubts about American hospitality. Since visiting Sutphen
especially, I have none remaining. You are the most gracious hosts
in the world. As an instance of this fact, I shall always cite my
unparalleled experience to-day. At the luncheon of your Secretary,
the amiable lady who sits at the table with me here, pleased me with
her china service; I happened to tell her it reminded me of home.
What was my surprise and gratification to find that your accomplished
President, at whose house I was dining a few hours later on--to whom
no doubt my remark had been repeated--had at such very short notice
managed to duplicate the set of china I had commended. And now,
again, what can I say? Words indeed fail me, when at the hospitable
board of your admirable Treasurer, I find a third set of my favorite
porcelain. The resources of you Americans really do surprise me. Such
a compliment, so conceived, so carried out, has never been paid to
me, before. Need I say that it goes to my inmost--”
[Illustration: “NEED I SAY THAT IT GOES TO MY INMOST--”]
Mr. Bludgeon stopped. He had heard a giggle of hilarity that could
no longer be repressed. The company, among whom Simonson and his
belongings had of course been under free discussion ever since they
had sat down to the tables, fairly exploded with delight.
Mr. Bludgeon hemmed, hawed, colored--finally took his seat. Mrs.
Stratton hastily left the room. Mrs. Grindstone and Miss Bennett, sat
on, mute, unrevealing as two Sphinxes--but evidently not offended
beyond hope of recovery.
* * * * *
Some time after Mr. Bludgeon’s visit to Sutphen had begun to pass
into tradition, poor Simonson’s establishment in Main Street was
shut up. He had dragged along for some time; but, lacking customers,
finally decided to pack up his onion-pattern china, and the rest, and
had emigrated to a more promising field for a caterer’s operations.
The day of his great success had proved his Waterloo.
* * * * *
Mrs. Grindstone is now the President of the Sutphen Literary
Club--_vice_ Mrs. Chauncey Stratton resigned and gone abroad. Miss
Bennett is still the Secretary. Mr. Grindstone’s gas bills remain
reasonably low.