Mr. Van Kamp, back in the woodshed, looked about him with an eye of
content.
“Rather cozy for a woodshed,” he observed. “I wonder if we couldn’t
scare up a little session of dollar limit?”
Both Uncle Billy and Mr. Ellsworth were willing. Death and poker
level all Americans. A fourth hand was needed, however. The stage
driver was in bed and asleep, and Mr. Ellsworth volunteered to find
the extra player.
“I’ll get Ralph,” he said. “He plays a fairly stiff game.” He
finally found his son on the porch, apparently alone, and stated
his errand.
“Thank you, but I don’t believe I care to play this evening,” was
the astounding reply, and Mr. Ellsworth looked closer. He made out,
then, a dim figure on the other side of Ralph.
“Oh! Of course not!” he blundered, and went back to the woodshed.
Three-handed poker is a miserable game, and it seldom lasts long.
It did not in this case. After Uncle Billy had won the only
jack-pot deserving of the name, he was allowed to go blissfully to
sleep with his hand on the handle of the big jug.
After poker there is only one other always available amusement
for men, and that is business. The two travelers were quite well
acquainted when Ralph put his head in at the door.
“Thought I’d find you here,” he explained. “It just occurred to me
to wonder whether you gentlemen had discovered, as yet, that we are
all to be house guests at the Carston-Tyler wedding.”
“Why, no!” exclaimed his father in pleased surprise. “It is a most
agreeable coincidence. Mr. Van Kamp, allow me to introduce my son,
Ralph. Mr. Van Kamp and myself, Ralph, have found out that we shall
be considerably thrown together in a business way from now on. He
has just purchased control of the Metropolitan and Western string
of interurbans.”
“Delighted, I’m sure,” murmured Ralph, shaking hands, and then he
slipped out as quickly as possible. Some one seemed to be waiting
for him.
Perhaps another twenty minutes had passed, when one of the men had
an illuminating idea that resulted, later on, in pleasant relations
for all of them. It was about time, for Mrs. Ellsworth, up in the
bare suite, and Mrs. Van Kamp, down in the draughty barn, both
wrapped up to the chin and both still chilly, had about reached the
limit of patience and endurance.
“Why can’t we make things a little more comfortable for all
concerned?” suggested Mr. Van Kamp. “Suppose, as a starter, that we
have Mrs. Van Kamp give a shiver party down in the barn?”
“Good idea,” agreed Mr. Ellsworth. “A little diplomacy will do it.
Each one of us will have to tell his wife that the other fellow
made the first abject overtures.”
Mr. Van Kamp grinned understandingly, and agreed to the infamous
ruse.
“By the way,” continued Mr. Ellsworth, with a still happier
thought, “you must allow Mrs. Ellsworth to furnish the dinner for
Mrs. Van Kamp’s shiver party.”
“Dinner!” gasped Mr. Van Kamp. “By all means!”
Both men felt an anxious yawning in the region of the appetite,
and a yearning moisture wetted their tongues. They looked at the
slumbering Uncle Billy and decided to see Mrs. Tutt themselves
about a good, hot dinner for six.
“Law me!” exclaimed Aunt Margaret when they appeared at the kitchen
door. “I swan I thought you folks ’u’d never come to yore senses.
Here I’ve had a big pot o’ stewed chicken ready on the stove fer
two mortal hours. I kin give ye that, an’ smashed taters an’
chicken gravy, an’ dried corn, an’ hot corn-pone, an’ currant
jell, an’ strawberry preserves, an’ my own cannin’ o’ peaches, an’
pumpkin-pie an’ coffee. Will that do ye?” Would it _do_! _Would_ it
do!!
As Aunt Margaret talked, the kitchen door swung wide, and the two
men were stricken speechless with astonishment. There, across
from each other at the kitchen table, sat the utterly selfish and
traitorous younger members of the rival houses of Ellsworth and
Van Kamp, deep in the joys of chicken, and mashed potatoes, and
gravy, and hot corn-pone, and all the other “fixings,” laughing and
chatting gaily like chums of years’ standing. They had seemingly
just come to an agreement about something or other, for Evelyn,
waving the shorter end of a broken wishbone, was vivaciously saying
to Ralph:
“A bargain’s a bargain, and I always stick to one I make.”