“Turn off that horrible jazz, Adolph, and get WXL. It’s thirty-three on
the dial, you know,” said Miss Maria Bascom, proprietor and hostess of
Wistaria Lodge. “I’ve had nothing but jazz all the afternoon—songs and
ukuleles and organs and orchestras, all the time. Seems as if I’d go
distracted! Something ought to be done about it.”
[Illustration: portrait of Miss Maria Bascom]
“Suppose you try snapping off the switch,” suggested Henry Caddock, dean
of the boarding house, who sat at the foot of the table, opposite Miss
Bascom. “That’s what I do when I come into the house in the afternoon
and there’s no one around, and Adolph has left the thing running. You’ve
no idea how peaceful and quiet it makes the house, and it saves
electricity.”
“I had an idea that Adolph kept it running most of the time,” said Miss
Bascom in a low tone, as the butler busied himself with the radio
cabinet in the parlor. “Adolph is very fond of music.”
“Music?” queried Hubert Quirk, on the right of the table.
“If it isn’t music, what is it?” challenged Mrs. Susan Tredmore, on the
left of the hostess. “Some very distinguished authorities claim, you
know, that jazz is the logical expression of American life—of the
tremendous, throbbing, spontaneous action and spirit of the people.”
“Sure! I guess that’s it,” agreed Horace Sheldon, across the table.
“That’s the way life and business look to me, all right. It’s something
fierce, believe me!”
“Oh, you take a very cynical view of it, Mr. Sheldon,” said Mrs.
Tredmore.
“Who wouldn’t?” murmured the laconic Hubert Quirk.
“And what is your view of such things, Dr. Hillary?” persisted the lady.
The college professor smiled benignly, and delicately touched his lips
with his napkin.
“I’m inclined to believe that all these things will adjust themselves. A
casual survey of history is—er—moderately reassuring—to those who do not
expect too much.”
“I’m so glad to hear you say that, Dr. Hillary!” declared the lady,
vastly gratified.
“Indeed, yes! Such an opinion from a professor stimulates one’s faith in
the eternal verities, doesn’t it?” seconded the newest boarder, Miss
Sylvia Stark, who had come to Port Cardinal to teach mathematics in the
high school.
“Mm—Monday night,” mused the hostess, “and—er—the Orpheus Gleemen are on
at eight o’clock, aren’t they, Mr. Raymond?”
“Yes, Miss Bascom, eight o’clock,” answered Douglas Raymond, the robust
baritone of the quartet to which she referred. “Rather nice program
tonight, too.”
“‘Rather nice!’” exclaimed Ralph Atwood, from the other end of the
table. “That’s it exactly, Doug. Looks like the radio audience
everywhere is made up of the inmates of old ladies’ and old men’s homes.
Sentimental stuff! Milk toast and weak tea!
“Gosh! I never knew that all the people were so easy to entertain—if
they are! Radio! Huh! I don’t mind hearing baseball scores and the stock
market, but I’d shut the thing off right there and let it go at that.
What’s the big baritone solo feature tonight? ‘My Mother Was a Lady,’ or
‘Asleep in the Deep’?”
“One good thing about radio, Ralph, you _can_ shut it off,” said the
baritone a little self-consciously.
“Can you, though?” challenged the other. “I haven’t noticed that.
Perhaps so—if you’re a hermit in a cave twenty miles from nowhere.”
“Sorry you have such a hard time, Mr. Atwood,” said Miss Bascom with
mild sarcasm. “You remember we put it to a vote when the set was
installed, and you all agreed that if just one boarder wanted to listen
in, the others must raise no objections; that is, up to eleven o’clock.
“And I notice that you all sit up together frequently until midnight
when there’s something good.”
Rice pudding was served, and some second and third cups of coffee; then
the boarders began rising and drifting toward the parlor.
“Now that tune!” said Henry Caddock peevishly, cocking his ear toward
the loud-speaker on top of the bookcase: “I was fussing with the dial
last night and I found five stations all playing that tune at once; you
could not get away from it. Next week it’ll be another tune, but they
have to run just one or two favorites to death.”
“Ready, Mr. Raymond?” called Dora Perkins, standing at the foot of the
stairs in the hall.
[Illustration: portrait of Dora Perkins]
“Sure, I’m coming,” answered the baritone, hurrying down the stairs.
“We’ve got plenty of time. Good-by, Kitty. See you when I get home.”
“Oh, good-by,” said little Kitty Granby, a stenographer in the First
National Bank, affecting an air of easy indifference, and meeting the
sweet smile of Dora Perkins through the hall door with one carefully
calculated to be just as sweet and just as feline.
“You know WXL is our own station, right here in Port Cardinal, Miss
Stark,” the hostess explained to the new boarder. “And we’re fortunate
in having two of the regular staff artists here in our little family.
Miss Perkins plays piano solos and accompaniments, and Mr. Raymond is
the baritone in the famous Orpheus Gleemen—the wonderful male quartet.
They sing three times a week, and Sundays.”
“Which is four times too many,” put in Ralph Atwood impudently. “They
are _famous_ in Port Cardinal, Miss Stark, and _wonderful_ in the same
town. To the big radio audiences out on the air, they’re one of the
things that fill in; folks can listen to ’em when they’re too lazy to
get up and shut off the switch.
“Takes all kinds to make a program, I guess. Every radio station ought
to be limited to about three hours a day; we might get something good
once in awhile.”
The men lighted up pipes, cigars, and cigarettes, and gallantly waited
for the women to dispose themselves about the radio end of the parlor in
chairs.
It was Miss Stark’s first evening at Wistaria Lodge, and she grew
suddenly a little more self-conscious, then fidgety, and finally
produced a little tortoise-shell cigarette case.
“Are there—ah—any objections, Miss Bascom?” she inquired of the hostess.
“N-n-n-no! Miss Stark, we’re quite modernistic here—though decently
conservative. We have emerged from the Victorian age.”
She produced a cigarette for herself, obviously to put the stranger at
ease.
Ottilie Eldom, buyer in a department store, casually brought forth a
paper of cigarettes from the handbag in her lap.
“I don’t know much about Victorian ages or any other kind,” she said in
her habitual, half-sullen, half-droll manner, “but I’ve been smoking
fags for ten years; so don’t get fussed on my account, Miss Stark.”
“You started smoking as a mere child, dear!” exclaimed Etta Upham, the
beauty specialist.
“Thanks, awfully, old bean!” returned Miss Eldom. “Yes, it was when my
mother was passing me off as sixteen—about the time that horseless
buggies were coming in. You remember!”
“No, I don’t remember!” snapped Etta, flushing. “Thank the Lord I’m no
older than I am!”
“You should be thankful for that, dear,” agreed Ottilie.
“How about the movie, Kitty?” Ralph Atwood asked the little
stenographer. “It’s rotten, as usual, but we’ll escape the radio.”
“Thanks very much, but I think I’ll stay in tonight.”
“How about coming with me, Kitty?” broke in Hubert Quirk. “The show’ll
be just as rotten, but you look well walking with me; we’ve got style.”
“No, thank you.”
“Wise kid!” murmured Felix McMasters, the irrepressible. “You knew I was
going to ask you, Kitty! You get the show, ice cream, and a taxi home.
There’s a new line that runs the mile limit for thirty-five cents. Get
on your coat an’ hat.”
“No, thank you,” said Kitty, and her eyes snapped a little, and her
little sensitive chin seemed to quiver slightly. “I said I thought I’d
stay in tonight.”
“Yeh! The Orpheus Gleemen are on the air!” jeered Ralph.
“And what if they are?” challenged Kitty angrily.
“I’m not taking any blame either way,” said Ralph. “They’re on the air,
and I don’t know any way of taking ’em off. But it’s too bad to think
any one has to sit here and listen. Dora giving Doug the glad eye as he
comes downstairs, and sparking with ’im all the way to the studio—it’s a
two-mile walk, isn’t it? And all the way home again, too!
“Any one would think you’d show some independence, Kit, and have a
little fun yourself. You don’t get a thing, sitting home and moping over
a guy like Doug. I never knew any o’ these male nightingales that
weren’t crazy about themselves—an’ you fool flappers play right up to
’em and make ’em a blame sight worse!”
[Illustration: portrait of Horace Sheldon]
Kitty got up in a rage and flounced across the room, taking a seat by
the middle-aged Horace Sheldon, proprietor of a down town cigar store.
Mr. Sheldon patted her small left hand with paternal solicitude, and
when he quietly made some effort to retain his hold on the hand, she
jerked it away and seemed perilously close to tears of mortification and
anger.
“There! There they are!” exclaimed Miss Bascom, hushing the company with
upraised forefinger.