_Introducing Our Next-door Neighbors_
One morning Silvia and I lingered over our coffee cups discussing our
plans for the coming summer, which included visits from my sister Beth
and my college chum, Rob Rossiter. We wished to avoid having their
arrivals occur simultaneously, however, because Rob was a woman-hater,
or thought he was. We decided to have Beth pay her visit first and
later take Rob with us on our vacation trip to some place where the
fishing facilities would be to our liking. However, summer vacation
time like our plans was yet far, vague and dim.
[Illustration: Uncle Issachar]
While I was putting on my overcoat, Silvia had gone to the window and
was looking pensively at the vacant house next to ours.
"I fear," she said abruptly and irrelevantly, "that we are destined
to receive no part of Uncle Issachar's fortune."
Uncle Issachar was a wealthy but eccentric relative of my wife. He had
made us no wedding gift beyond his best wishes, but he had then
informed us that at the birth of each of our prospective sons he
should place in the bank to Silvia's account the sum of five thousand
dollars. We had never invited him to visit us or made any overtures in
the way of communication with him, lest he should think we were
cultivating his acquaintance from mercenary motives.
While I was debating whether the lament in Silvia's tone was for the
loss of the money or the lack of children, she again spoke; this time
in a tone which had lost its languor.
"There is a big moving van in front of the house next door. At last we
will have some near neighbors."
"Are they unloading furniture?" I asked inanely, crossing to the
window.
"No; course not," came cheerfully from Huldah, who had come in to
remove the dishes. "Most likely they are unloading lions and tigers."
As I have already intimated, Huldah was a privileged servant.
"They are unloading children!" explained Silvia, in a tone implying
that Huldah's sarcastic implication would be infinitely more
preferable. "The van seems to be overflowing with them--a perfect
crowd. Do you suppose the house is to be used as an orphan asylum?"
"I think not," I assured her as I counted the flock. Five children
would seem like a crowd to Silvia.
"Boys!" exclaimed Huldah tragically, as she joined us for a survey.
"I'll see that they don't keep the grass off our lawn."
Late that afternoon I opened the outer door of the dining-room in
response to the rap of strenuously applied knuckles.
A lad of about eleven years with the sardonic face of a satyr and
diabolically bright eyes peered into the room.
"We're going to have soup for dinner," he announced, "and mother wants
to borrow a soup plate for father to eat his out of."
Silvia stared at him aghast. She seemed to feel something compelling
in the boy's personnel, however, and she went to the china closet and
brought forth a soup plate which she handed to him without comment.
In silence we watched him run across the lawn, twirling the plate
deftly above his head in juggler fashion.
The next day when we sat down to dinner our new young neighbor again
appeared on our threshold.
"Halloa!" he called chummily. "We are going to have soup again and we
want a soup plate for father."
"Where is the one I loaned you yesterday?" demanded Silvia in a tone
far below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, while her features assumed a
frigidity that would have congealed father's favorite sustenance had
it been in her vicinity.
"Oh, we broke that!" he casually and cheerfully explained.
With much reluctance Silvia bestowed another plate upon the young
applicant.
"Wait!" I said as he started to leave, "don't you want the soup
tureen, too, or the ladle and some soup spoons?"
"No, thank you," he answered politely. "None of the rest of us like
soup, so we dish father's up in the kitchen. He doesn't like soup
particularly, but he eats it because it goes down quick and lets him
have more time for work."
This time as he sped homeward, he didn't spin the plate in air, but
tried out a new plan of balancing it on a stick.
"I think," I suggested gently, when our young neighbor was lost to our
sorrowful sight, "that it might be well to invest in another dozen or
so of soup plates. I will see about getting them at wholesale rates.
Our supply will soon give out if our new neighbors continue to
cultivate the soup and borrowing habit."
"I will buy some at the five cent store," replied Silvia. "I think I
had better call upon them tomorrow and see what manner of people they
can be."
When I came home the next day it was quite evident that she had
called.
"Well," I inquired, "what do they keep--a soup house?"
"They are literary people, the highest of high-brows. Their name is
Polydore, and the head of the house----"
"Mr. or Mrs.?" I interrupted.
"The head of the house," pursued Silvia, ignoring my question, "is a
collector."
"So I inferred. Has he a large collection of soup plates?"
"She collects antiquities and writes their history. He pursues
science."
"They were seemingly communicative. What did they look like?"
"I didn't see them. After I rang I heard a woman's voice bidding some
one not to answer the bell. She said she couldn't be bothered with
interruptions, so I went on up the street to call on Mrs. Fleming, who
told me all about them. She was also refused admittance when she
called. On my way home I met that boy--that awful boy----"
She paused, evidently overcome by the consideration of his awfulness.
"He had been digging bait--"
Again she paused as if words were inadequate for her climax.
"Well," I encouraged.
"He was carrying his bait--horrid, wriggling angleworms--in our soup
plate!"
"Then it is not broken yet!" I exclaimed joyfully. "Let us hope it is
given an antiseptic bath before father's next indulgence in consommé.
After dinner I will go over and try my luck at paying my respects to
the soup savant."
"They won't let you in."
"In that case I shall follow their lead of setting aside all ceremony
and formality and admit myself, as their heir apparent does here."
After dinner and my twilight smoke, I went next door, first asking
Silvia if there was anything we needed that I could borrow, just to
show them there were no hard feelings.
My third vigorous ring brought results. A slipshod servant appeared
and reluctantly seated me in the hall. She read with seeming interest
the card I handed to her and then, pushing aside some mangy looking
portières, vanished from view.
She evidently delivered my card, for I heard a woman's voice read my
name, "Mr. Lucien Wade."
After another short interval the slovenly servant returned and offered
me my card.
"She seen it," she assured me in answer to my look of surprise.
She again put the portières between us and I was obliged to own myself
baffled in my efforts to break in. I was showing myself out when my
onward course was deflected by a troop of noisy children leaded by
the soup plate skirmisher, who was the oldest and apparently the
leader of the brood.
"Oh, halloa!" he greeted me with the air of an old acquaintance,
"didn't you see the folks?"
On my informing him that I had seen no one but the servant, he
exclaimed:
"Oh, that chicken wouldn't know enough to ask you in! Just follow us.
Mother wouldn't remember to come out."
I was loth to force my presence on mother, but by this time my
hospitable young friend had pulled the portières so strenuously that
they parted from the pole, and I was presented willy nilly to the
collector of antiquities, who had the angular sharp-cut face and form
of a rocking horse. She was seated at a table strewn with books and
papers, writing at a rate of speed that convinced me she was in the
throes of an inspiration. I forebore to interrupt. My scruples,
however, were not shared by her eldest son. He gave her elbow a jog of
reminder which sent her pencil to the floor.
"Mother!" he shouted in megaphone voice, "here's the man next
door--the one we get our soup plates from."
She looked up abstractedly.
"Oh," she said in dismayed tone, "I thought you had gone. I am very
much engaged in writing a paper on modern antiquities."
I murmured some sort of an apology for my untimely interruption.
"I am so absorbed in my great work," she explained, "that I am
oblivious to all else. I have the rare and great gift of concentration
in a marked degree."
I was quite sure of this fact. She took another pencil from a supply
box and resumed her literary occupation. As my presence seemed of so
little moment, I lingered.
"Mother," shouted one of the boys, snatching the pencil from her
grasp, "I'm hungry. I didn't have any supper."
"Yes, you did!" she asserted. "I saw Gladys give you a bowl of bread
and milk."
"Emerald took it away from me and drank it up."
"Didn't neither!" denied a shaggy looking boy. "I spilled it."
He accompanied this denial by a fierce punch in his accuser's ribs.
"Here!" said the author of Modern Antiquities, taking a nickel from
her pocket, "go get yourself some popcorn, Demetrius."
"I ain't Demetrius! I'm Pythagoras."
"It makes no difference. Go and get it and don't speak to me again
tonight."
The boy had already snatched the coin, and he now started for the
exit, but his outgoing way was instantly blocked by a promiscuous pack
of pugilistic Polydores, and an ardent and general onslaught
followed.
I endeavored to untangle the arms and legs of the attackers and the
attacked in a desire to rescue the youngest, a child of two, but I
soon beat a retreat, having no mind to become a punching bag for
Polydores.
The concentrator at the writing table, looking up vaguely, perceived
the general joust.
"How provoking!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I was in search of an
antonym and now they've driven it out of my memory."
I politely offered my sympathy for her loss.
"Did you ever see such misbehaved children?" she asked casually and
impersonally as she calmly surveyed the free-for-all fight.
[Illustration: Dr. Felix Polydore]
"Children always misbehave before company," I remarked propitiatingly.
"Of course they know better."
"Why no, they don't!" she declared, looking at me in surprise,
"they----"
At this instant the errant antonym evidently flashed upon her mental
vision and her pencil hastened to record it and then flew on at
lightning speed.
I was about to try to make an escape when a momentary cessation of
hostilities was caused by the entrance of a moth-eaten, abstracted-looking
man. As the _two-year-old_ hailed him as "fadder", I gathered that he
was the person responsible for the family now fighting at his feet.
"What's the trouble?" he asked helplessly.
"She gave Thag a nickel," explained the eldest boy, "and we want it."
The man drew a sigh of relief. The solution of this family problem was
instantly and satisfactorily met by an impartial distribution of
nickels.
With demoniac whoops of delight, the contestants fled from the room.
I introduced myself to the man of the house, who seemed to realize
that some sort of compulsory conventionalities must be observed. He
looked hopelessly at his wife, and seeing that she was beyond response
to an S O S call to things mundane, he frankly but impressively
informed me that I must expect nothing of them socially as their lives
were devoted to research and study. The children, however, he assured
me, could run over frequently to see us.
I instinctively felt that my call was considered ended, so I took my
departure. I related the details of my neighborly visit to Silvia, but
her sense of humor was not stirred. It was entirely dominated by her
dread of the young Polydores.
"How many children are there?" she asked faintly. "More than the five
you said you counted that first day?"
"They seemed not so many as much. That is, though I suppose in round
numbers there are but five, yet each of those five is equal to at
least three ordinary children."
"Are they all boys? Huldah says the youngest wears dresses."
"Nevertheless he is a boy. They are all unmistakably boys. I think
they must have been born with boots on and," conscious of the imprints
of my shins, "hobnail boots at that. Even the youngest, a two-year
old, seems to have been graduated from Home Rule."
"I can't bear to think of their going to bed hungry," she said
wistfully. "Think of that unnatural mother expecting them to satisfy
their hunger by popcorn."
"They didn't though," I assured her. "I saw them stop a street vender
below here and invest their nickels in hot dogs."
"Hot dogs!" repeated Silvia in horror.
"Wienerwursts," I hastened to interpret.