_In Which We Take Boarders_
Four weeks of unalloyed bliss and then the summer vacation times
arrived, bringing joy to the heart of the Polydores and the teacher of
the ungraded room, but deep gloom to the hearthside of the Wades.
One misfortune always brings another. A rival applicant received
the coveted attorneyship and we bade a sad farewell to piano,
saddle-horse, automobile and journey, the furnishings to our Little
House of Dreams.
"I did want you to have a car, Lucien," sighed Silvia, regretfully,
"and you worked so hard this last year, you need a trip. Won't you go
somewhere with Rob--without me?"
I assured her it would be no vacation without her.
"Do you know, Lucien," she proposed diffidently, "I think it would be
an excellent plan to invite Uncle Issachar to visit us. He knows no
more about children than I do--than I did, I mean, and if he should
see the Polydores he'd give us five thousand each for the children we
didn't have."
I wouldn't consent to this plan. I had met Uncle Issachar once. He was
a crusty old bachelor with a morbid suspicion that everyone was
working him for his money. I don't wonder he thought so. He had no
other attractions.
Perceiving the strength of my opposition Silvia sweetly and
sagaciously refrained from further pressure.
"We should not repine," she said. "We have health and happiness and
love. What are pianos and cars and trips compared to such assets?"
What, indeed! I admitted that things might be worse.
Alas! All too soon was my statement substantiated. That night after we
had gone to bed, I heard a taxicab sputtering away at the house next
door.
"The Polydores must have unexpected guests," I remarked.
"I trust they brought no children with them," murmured Silvia
drowsily.
The next morning while we were at breakfast, the odor of June roses
wafting in through the open window, the delicious flavor of red-ripe
strawberries tickling our palate, and the anticipation of rice
griddle-cakes exhilarating us, the millennium came.
For the five young Polydores bore down upon us _en masse_.
"Father and mother have gone away," proclaimed Ptolemy, who was always
spokesman for the quintette.
This intelligence was of no particular interest to us--not then, at
least. We rarely saw father and mother Polydore, and they were
apparently of no need to their offspring.
Ptolemy's next announcement, however, was startling and effective in
its dramatic intensity.
"We've come over to stay with you while they are away."
I laughed; jocosely, I thought.
Silvia paid no heed to my forced hilarity, but ejaculated gaspingly:
"Why, what do you mean!"
"They have gone away somewhere," enlightened our oracle. "They went to
the train last night in a taxi. They have gone somewhere to find out
something about some kind of aborigines."
"Which reminds me," I remarked reminiscently, "of the man who traveled
far and vainly in search of a certain plant which, on his return, he
found growing beside his own doorstep."
Silvia paid no heed to my misplaced pleasantry. She was right--as
usual. It was no time for levity.
"I don't see," spoke my unappreciative wife, addressing Ptolemy, "why
their absence should make any difference in your remaining at home.
Gladys can cook your meals and put Diogenes to bed as usual."
"Gladys has gone," piped Demetrius. "She left yesterday afternoon. She
was only staying till she could get her pay."
"Father forgot to get another girl in her place," informed Ptolemy,
"and he forgot to tell mother he had forgotten until just before they
went to the train. She said it didn't matter--that we could just as
well come over here and stay with you."
"She said," added Pythagoras, "that you were so crazy over children,
that probably you'd be glad to have us stay with you all the time."
My last strawberry remained poised in mid-air. It was quite apparent
to me now that there was nothing funny about this situation.
"Milk, milk!" whimpered Diogenes, pulling at Silvia's dress and making
frantic efforts to reach the cream pitcher.
Huldah had come in with the griddle-cakes during this avalanche of
news.
"Here, all you kids!" commanded our field marshal, as she picked up
Diogenes, "beat it to the kitchen, and I'll give you some breakfast.
Hustle up!"
The Polydores, whose eyes were bulging with expectancy and
semi-starvation, tumbled over each other in their eagerness to "hustle
up and beat it to the kitchen." Our oiler of troubled waters followed,
and there was assurance of a brief lull.
"What shall we do!" I exclaimed helplessly when the door had closed on
the last Polydore. I felt too limp and impotent to cope with the
situation. Not so Silvia.
"Do!" she echoed with an intensity of tone and feeling I had never
known her to display. "Do! We'll do something, I am sure! I will not
for a moment submit to such an imposition. Who ever heard of such
colossal nerve! That father and mother should be brought back and
prosecuted. I shall report them to the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children. But we won't wait for such procedure. We'll
express each and every Polydore to them at once."
"I should certainly do that P.D.Q. and C.O.D.," I acquiesced, "if the
Polydore parents could be located, but you know the abodes of
aborigines are many and scattered."
My remarks seemed to fall as flat as the flapjacks I was siruping.
Silvia arose, determination in every lineament and muscle, and crossed
the room. She opened the door leading into the kitchen.
"Ptolemy," she demanded, "where have your father and mother gone?"
He came forward and replied in a voice somewhat smothered by cakes and
sirup.
"I don't know. They didn't say."
"We can find out from the ticket-agent," I optimistically assured
her.
"They never bother to buy tickets. Pay on the train," Ptolemy
explained.
My legal habit of counter-argument asserted itself.
"We can easily ascertain to what point their baggage was checked," I
remarked, again essaying to maintain a rôle of good cheer.
But the pessimistic Ptolemy was right there with another of his
gloom-casting retaliations.
"They only took suit-cases and they always keep them in the car.
Here's a check father said to give you to pay for our board. He said
you could write in any amount you wanted to."
"He got a lot of dough yesterday," informed Pythagoras, "and he put
half of it in the bank here."
Ptolemy handed over a check which was blank except for Felix
Polydore's signature.
"I don't see," I weakly exclaimed when my wife had closed the kitchen
door, "why she put them off on _us_. Why didn't she trade her brats
off for antiques?"
Silvia eyed the check wistfully. I could read the unspoken thought
that here, perhaps, was the opportunity for our much-desired trip.
"No, Silvia," I answered quickly, "not for any number of blank checks
or vacation trips shall you have the care and annoyance of those wild
Comanches."
"I know what I'll do!" she exclaimed suddenly. "I'll go right down to
the intelligence office and get anything in the shape of a maid and
put her in charge of the Polydore caravansary with double wages and
every night out and any other privileges she requests."
This seemed a sane and sensible arrangement, and I wended my way to
my office feeling that we were out of the woods.
When I returned home at noon, I found that we had only exchanged the
woods for water--and deep water at that.
I beheld a strange sight. Silvia sat by our bedroom window twittering
soft, cooing nonsensical nothings to Diogenes, who was clasped in her
arms, his flushed little face pressed close to her shoulder.
"He's been quite ill, Lucien. I was frightened and called the doctor.
He said it was only the slight fever that children are subject to. He
thought with good care that he'd be all right in a few days."
"Did you succeed in getting a cook to go to the Polydores?" I asked
anxiously. "You'll need a nurse to go there, too, to take care of
Diogenes."
She looked at me reproachfully and rebukingly.
"Why, Lucien! You don't suppose I could send this sick baby back to
that uninviting house with only hired help in charge! Besides, I don't
believe he'd stay with a stranger. He seems to have taken a fancy to
me."
Diogenes confirmed this belief by a languid lifting of his eyelids, as
he feelingly patted her cheek with his baby fingers.
I forebore to suggest that the fancy seemed to be mutual. Diogenes,
sick, was no longer an "imp of the devil", but a normal, appealing
little child. It occurred to me that possibly the care of a sick
Polydore might develop Silvia's tiny germ of child-ken.
"Keep him here of course," I agreed, "but--the other children must
return home."
"Diogenes would miss them," she said quickly, "and the doctor says his
whims must be humored while he is sick. He is almost asleep now. I
think he will let me put him down in his own little bed. Ptolemy
brought it over here. Pull back the covers for me, Lucien. There!"
Diogenes half opened his eyes, as she laid him in the bed and smiled
wanly.
"Mudder!" he cooed.
Silvia flushed and looked as if she dreaded some expression of mirth
from me. Relieved by my silence and a suggestion of moisture in the
region of my eyes--the day was quite warm--she confessed:
"He has called me that all the morning."
"It would be a wise Polydore that knows its own parents," I observed.
The slight illness of Diogenes lasted three or four days. I still
shudder to recall the memory of that hideous period. Silvia's time and
attention were devoted to the sick child. Huldah was putting in all
her leisure moments at the dentist's, where she was acquiring her
third set of teeth, and joy rode unconfined and unrestrained with our
"boarders."
Polydore proclivities made the Reign of Terror formerly known as the
French Revolution seem like an ice cream festival. I don't regard
myself as a particularly nervous man, but there's a limit! Their war
whoops and screeches got on my nerves and temper to the extent of
sending me into their midst one evening brandishing a whip and
commanding immediate silence. I got it. Not through fear of
chastisement, for fear was an emotion unknown to a Polydore, but from
astonishment at so unexpected a procedure from so unexpected a source.
Heretofore I had either ignored them or frolicked with them. Before
they had recovered from their shock, Silvia appeared on the scene.
"Diogenes," she informed them, "was not used to such unwonted quiet,
and was fretting at the unaccustomed stillness. Would the boys please
play Indian or some of their games again?"
The boys would. I backed from the room, the whip behind me, carefully
kept without Silvia's angle of vision. Before Ptolemy resumed his rôle
of chief, he bestowed a knowing and maddening wink upon me.
I wished that we had remained neighbor-less. I wished that the
aborigines would scalp Felix Polydore and the writer of Modern
Antiquities. Then we could land their brats on the Probate Court. I
wished that this were the reign of Herod. I vowed I would backslide
from the Presbyterian faith since it no longer included in its
articles of belief the eternal damnation of infants. How long, O
Catiline, would--
A paralyzing suspicion flashed into the maelstrom of my vituperative
maledictions. I rushed wildly upstairs to our combination bedroom,
sickroom, and nursery, where Silvia sat like a guardian angel beside
the Polydore patient.
"Silvia," I shouted excitedly, "do you suppose those diabolical
Polydore parents purposely played this trick on us? Was it a
premeditated Polydore plan to abandon their young? And can you blame
them for playing us for easy marks? Could any parents, Polydore, or
otherwise, ever come back to such fiends as these?"
"Hush!" she cautioned, without so much as a glance in my direction.
"You'll wake Diogenes!"
Wake Diogenes! Ye Gods! And she had also implored the brothers of
Diogenes to continue their anvil chorus! This took the last stitch of
starch from my manly bosom. Spiritless and spineless I bore all
things, believed all things--but hoped for nothing.