DODO JOINS THE RANKS
Back in Denver once more, Mr. Alexander found a telegram awaiting
him. In it he read that his wife and daughter would leave Colorado
Springs and planned to arrive in the city that same evening, as Mrs.
Alexander had unexpectedly decided to join the travelers to Arizona.
“Now, what d’ye think of that?” exclaimed little Mr. Alexander,
snapping the telegram with impatient fingers. “It’s all right for
Dodo to come, but my wife isn’t used to roughin’ it—least-ways, she
don’t care for it, since we got so much money to spend.”
“Oh, I shall enjoy having another woman help me to keep all the
girls in order,” remarked Mrs. Courtney, pleasantly.
“Don’t fool yourself, Madam—my wife isn’t goin’ to be much help in
lookin’ after others. She demands all the lookin’ after for herself.
I gen’ally see to it that she has a lady’s maid to wait on her—that
lets me out of buttonin’ her boots, and runnin’ here and there like
a beast of burden, to take or carry her shawl, or parasol, or
smellin’ salts. Since she’s takin’ to golf and tennis, it’s her
golf-bag or the tennis racquet I’m expected to carry. I’m sorry to
have to explain so much of my family troubles to you, Madam, but you
must know that I hate to play caddie, though my wife says I resemble
one.” The humility and meekness of the little man made Mrs. Courtney
feel as though she must stand by him in some way—just as Polly’s
friends had felt, as soon as they had grown to understand him on
that European tour.
“If you really wish to secure a competent lady’s maid for your wife,
maybe I might help you in seeking for one in the city to-day,”
ventured Mrs. Courtney, though she realized what a social error she
was committing in offering to engage a maid for another woman.
“Oh, say! If you’d do that for me, Madam, I’ll never forget it. I
want to give my time to Mr. Dalken and the men we hope to meet here
in Denver and, later on, in Prescott. If Mrs. Alexander demands my
attention, how can I serve two masters?” appealed the little man.
“Just tell me the kind of maid I ought to hire, and I’ll move heaven
and earth to find one for you,” promised Mrs. Courtney; at the same
time she wondered what had come over her to make her step into
another woman’s place in this way, and thus force that woman to give
the husband all the spare time he craved to attend to business
affairs. But Mrs. Courtney had no idea that she was acting because
of her deep interest in the South American land plans, in which Mr.
Dalken had not only committed himself as well as his keen business
brain, but also had signed for great blocks of stock that would
bankrupt him should the scheme fail.
“It _must not_ fail!” said Mrs. Courtney, vehemently, to herself.
Thus it came to pass that Polly and Eleanor were invited to
accompany their chaperon to one of the best employment offices in
Denver that same afternoon of their arrival at the hotel. And to
their amusement, they heard and saw Mrs. Courtney interrogate
several maids, believing as she did, that maids out west must be
much like maids in New York. She was soon informed to the contrary
however.
To her questions of “Can you dress hair stylishly?” “Do you wash and
mend laces neatly?” “Are you experienced in manicuring?” “and in
preparing the bath?” and other personal attentions, she heard to her
surprise: “I kin darn socks, lady”; or “I have sewed clothes sence I
was knee-high to a prairie-dog”; or, perhaps, the applicant would
explain, “I ain’t no common general worker, lady, but I kin do plain
cookin’, er lend a hand at the wash-tub, when it’s called for. I
even will agree to het the water fer the baths, ef so come yuh-all
need it that way.”
Hence the polished society woman from the East had to confess
herself vanquished in her effort to help Mr. Alexander provide a
lady’s maid for his wife. On the way back to the hotel Polly made a
suggestion which Eleanor thought would prove very exciting, if not
practical, for Mrs. Alexander’s future peace and personal comfort.
“Why waste time in finding a maid for Dodo’s mother when we can get
a first-class Indian servant, who will cook, pack, wash, and do
everything else for the men, when they have to camp in the
mountains; then he can work for Mrs. Alexander, when the men are
with us and have no need of the Guide.”
“But, Polly, Mrs. Alexander will not need an Indian to cook or wash
for her—she wants a maid to look after her comfort in the hotels
along the beaten track,” argued Eleanor.
“If she annexes herself and her wardrobe trunks to our select party,
she’ll have to put up with discomforts in Arizona, even as we are
willing to do,” declared Polly, impatiently.
“Well, I’ve done all I could to smooth away the obstacles from
little Mr. Alexander’s pathway—now it is up to his wife to find her
own maid,” complained Mrs. Courtney.
That evening Eleanor amused the men by describing the visit at the
employment office and the interviews with sundry maids. Mr.
Alexander felt deeply obliged to Mrs. Courtney, but she begged him
to forget it, since she had not succeeded as she had promised him.
About eight o’clock that same evening, a commotion outside the hotel
entrance announced the arrival of Mrs. Alexander and her daughter.
This time, the commotion was caused by the taxi running head on into
a costly limousine which was waiting for its owner. Not only the
scene between the two chauffeurs, but also the hysterical screams
from the lady inside the cab, drew a crowd that refused to be
dispersed until an officer came running up to arrest the
culprits—should he find any.
Jack and Tom had been the first of the loungers in the hotel-lobby
to hurry to the street and watch the altercation between the two
drivers; but the moment they saw Dodo gazing anxiously from the taxi
window, they sprang across the sidewalk and quickly opened the door.
“Thank goodness, Jack, you’re here to get mother out of this!” cried
Dodo, in relief. Then she managed to slip her arm underneath her
mother’s, and urged her to get up and out of the cab.
Mrs. Alexander spied handsome Jack, and quickly decided she must
lean upon the strong right arm of a young man, instead of accepting
her daughter’s equally strong arm. With a rolling of her eyes
between pencilled eyelashes, and a plaintive gasp meant to enlist
Jack’s sympathy, Mrs. Alexander permitted herself to be coaxed from
the cab, and half-carried into the hotel. How she loved all this
confusion, which she considered better than nothing, in the absence
of other ways of announcing her arrival!
“Well, so here you are, my dear!” exclaimed little Mr. Alexander,
coming from the smoking-room, in time to see his wife sink upon a
huge lounge in the large reception hall.
Had it not been that Mr. Dalken, Tom, and the ladies now hastened to
greet the new arrivals, Mrs. Alexander might have amused herself by
scolding her spouse for his neglect in meeting her train at the
station—though she had failed to mention in the telegram the time
of its arrival in Denver. Being the center of interest, because of
the fuss she made over the collision in front of the hotel, Mrs.
Alexander forgot to take her husband to account for his oversight of
duty.
Mr. Dalken had planned to leave Denver the following morning—in
fact, he would not have stopped over-night at the hotel, had it not
been for the wire received by Mr. Alexander, in which Mrs. Alexander
said she would join the party in Denver that evening.
Now, to end the lady’s little tableau, Mr. Dalken looked at his
watch. “We must retire, friends, if we wish to get the train to
Albuquerque to-morrow morning.”
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Alexander, “I cannot think of it! I have a great
deal of shopping to attend to and, besides, I promised faithfully
that Dodo and I would wait here for a certain dear friend to join
us. He leaves the Springs in the morning, and I am sure he will be
with us by noon.”
“Who is he?” demanded her little lord and master. “Not a fool who’s
after Dodo’s money, I hope.”
“Ebeneezer! How can you speak so shamelessly of your child’s
admirers?” complained Mrs. Alexander.
“Don’t worry, Daddy,” added Dodo, frankly as ever. “He makes a fine
fetch-and-carry addition to Ma’s cortège, and I don’t mind him a
bit—he manages to dust his wisp of a moustache upon my finger-tips
now and then, and that seems to pay him for his doglike devotion to
Ma.”
“But why wait for him to come to Denver?” demanded her father.
“Why—because Ma invited him to join your party on its trip to
Arizona. She thinks the invigorating climate may cause certain
dormant brain cells in sweet little Algy’s cerebrum to open. If that
should develop, think how thankful we would be!” Dodo laughed
heartlessly.
“Poor Dodo!” whispered Eleanor to Polly. “What a life she must have
had with her mother, at such a resort as the Hot Springs.”
“Darling child!” cried Mrs. Alexander, reprovingly, to Dodo. “Some
day you will appreciate such a devoted love as adoring Algernon has
for you. At present you are too young to understand it.”
“I am as old as Polly and Eleanor, Ma, in spite of your denials of
my true age. I think it is too silly for anything—the way you tell
people how grown up I am for my tender age! How much older I _look_
than I really _am_! That I ought to be in school, with my hair in
pigtails! Now, I’m going to have it out, since Daddy is here to
stand by me. The next time you start in to sigh about my
precociousness for my age, I’m going to tell right out how old _you_
are. I’m going to inform people that you married very late in life,
and that I am a child of your old age.”
Ebeneezer Alexander smiled approvingly at his daughter’s threat, and
the others in the group had difficulty in controlling their facial
muscles—not that the elders approved of such remarks to a parent,
but Mrs. Alexander’s was an exceptional case, and Dodo happened to
be a very frank, even blunt, character, much like her father’s. Mrs.
Courtney heard and saw the attitude between mother and daughter, and
she was intelligent enough to understand the situation without any
other explanations. She felt that possibly she might be of great
service to both.
But Mrs. Alexander now commanded all attention. Dodo’s speech could
not be denied by her, so she took refuge in her usual
way—hysterics. All present, but Dodo and her father, rushed around
in search for smelling-salts and other remedies, but the two who
should have been most concerned were least concerned. They
understood that the third member of the family would come out of her
attack instantly, once she realized no one paid any attention to
her. Now, however, she continued the pretension as long as there
seemed hope of annoying others.
“I sure am sorry to interrupt you-all from waitin’ on my missus,
folks,” finally said Mr. Alexander, “but I got to get to bed, ‘cause
we’re goin’ to make an early start.”
This made his wife forget her recent indisposition. She sat up.
“Ebeneezer! I told you that I could not get ready to start away from
here so early as you plan. I have to do necessary shopping for
myself and Dodo,” exclaimed she.
“I will pass up the shopping, Ma, because I really prefer going on
with the rest of the party,” said Dodo, quickly.
“Children must be seen not——” Mrs. Alexander began, but she
suddenly remembered her daughter’s threat to expose her true age,
and she sighed aloud.
“If you say you must shop fer things, you can stay over and come
along on another train. Our’s won’t be the last one out of Denver,
you know,” ventured Mr. Alexander, hopefully.
“I am sorry that your shopping will detain you here, and not permit
you to go on with us in the morning,” added Mr. Dalken, hoping to
end the argument, and to show the lady that he was obdurate over her
selfishness.
“You men might go on, and we ladies follow in the afternoon,”
suggested Mrs. Alexander, appealing to Mrs. Courtney.
“No,” instantly retorted her spouse. “We got all the mileage on one
ticket, and the crowd can’t break up that way. You make up your mind
to stay and shop, and at the same time hire a maid for yourself to
go down to the desert of Arizona, and we’ll go on and wait for you
at Albuquerque.”
The evident desire of her liege lord to be rid of her society, even
for a day, caused the contrary woman to change her plans. “I will
sacrifice myself and all my appointments in Denver for you, dear
Ebeneezer. What time must I be ready in the morning?”
“Huh! All this time and talk wasted—might have said this in the
start!” snorted Mr. Alexander, marching away without replying to his
wife’s honeyed question.
Now the other members in the party believed Mrs. Alexander was
persuaded to go with them before noon the following day. But those
who had crossed wills with her in England and, later, on the
Continent, might have known her better. The next day proved that
Mrs. Alexander had won her point; she acted _too_ guileless about it
to deceive any one.
It had been decided to take the eleven-forty train from Denver, but
this decision came to naught much to the aggravation of the men.
Polly and Eleanor, knowing as they did Mrs. Alexander’s stock of
tricks, had to laugh at this newest one.
Everything was ready, and cabs were called to take the tourists to
the station. Bags, girls and all were settled in the taxis, and the
men were impatiently waiting for Mrs. Alexander to appear. Finally,
at the very last moment in which they might reach the train by
speeding the cars, she came out to the curb. Just as she was going
to step inside her cab, she cried in alarm and sank down upon the
curb.
Naturally her male companions sprang over to help her up, but she
could not stand. She hung limply between Mr. Dalken and her husband.
Meanwhile she groaned and seemed in genuine distress.
“Good gracious, Maggie, what ails you now?” wailed little Mr.
Alexander, wishing to thrust her into the cab, in order to permit
them to drive on.
“Take me back to the hotel! I cannot go——” she seemed to grow
faint and her head drooped forward.
“She’s ill, Mr. Alexander,” whispered Mr. Dalken, anxiously.
“Well, we’ll lift her in the cab, and the air’ll bring her to, as
soon as the driver starts,” suggested her husband.
The chauffeur now ventured a disconcerting announcement. “If you-all
planned to catch the noon express, you’re goin’ to be disappointed.
Can’t possibly make it now, not if you had wings to fly there.”
“Why, man, we’ve _got_ to catch it! Made dates with business men for
to-morrow,” said Jack impatiently, looking at his watch.
“Too bad, but you-all can understand that I’m not talking for my own
good, seein’ that I’m losin’ all these fares to the station,” said
the driver.
“He’s kerrect, Jack!” cried Mr. Alexander, in distress. “No use
scootin’ to catch that train. Gotta wait fer the five o’clock now.”
But his expression boded no future peace to his wife, who had been
the cause of the delay.
Mrs. Alexander was too wise an actress to revive immediately after
she had won her game. She allowed them to carry her into the ladies’
parlor, and there she secured the interest of the maid by slipping
her a liberal tip to attend upon her.
Mrs. Courtney remained with the sighing lady, but the girls would
not join them, lest Dodo express her candid opinion of this unusual
incident. In fact, it was all Polly could do to restrain Dodo from
telling her mother what she believed to be the truth; and the men
were equally engaged in keeping Mr. Alexander from announcing to his
wife his intentions to divorce her. Mr. Dalken laughed and explained
that a husband had to prove more serious misdemeanors on the part of
a wife than clever acting.
Mrs. Alexander revived quickly, once she had gained her point, and
by the time Mr. Algernon Alveston was announced, she had regained
her usual strength of mind, as well as strength of ankles—the
weakness which had caused her graceful subsidence upon the curb
seemed to have vanished like magic.
Mr. Dalken’s party had given up their rooms at the hotel, at the
time they believed themselves to be leaving for the train; then it
became necessary for the Alexanders to engage another suite to allow
the indisposed lady to recover without being annoyed by strangers.
Every member of the Dalken party, except Mrs. Alexander, was waiting
in the luxurious lounge for further news of the invalid, when a
thin, sallow-faced, silver-haired youth pranced into the hotel and
glanced eagerly around. He must have been weak-sighted, because Dodo
was a prominent figure in the waiting party of friends, yet the
newcomer failed to see her.
“Oh, goodness!” whispered Dodo. “There’s Algy,—spats, cane and
monocle!”
The others had seen the ridiculous-looking young man, and now they
gasped at Dodo’s information. Was _that_ the cause of their hold-up?
Mr. Alexander frowned ominously, as he muttered aloud: “Where’d he
come from, Dodo? And how long’ve you known him?”
“He doesn’t seem to know himself where he hailed from,” tittered
Dodo, getting back of her friends to avoid being spied by the little
green eye back of the monocle. “As for time in which to know him,
Daddy, a minute or two is sufficient. There’s nothing more to
discover, once you’ve had a look at his clothes and general get-up.”
Polly and Eleanor giggled, because Dodo’s description seemed to fit
the object perfectly. Then they suddenly turned their attention to
each other and seemed deeply interested in what the gentlemen were
saying,—because a bell-hop was seen to take a card from the clerk
and leave the desk. In a few seconds thereafter, he began to page
“Mrs. Alexander! Mrs. Alexander!”
“S—sh! don’t one of you dare to reply to that!” warned Mr.
Alexander, making sure that Dodo was safely screened from view by
the girls and Mrs. Courtney. “If that swell collar-ad over there’s
called to see Mrs. Alexander, let her answer the call. It ain’t fer
you ner me, Dodo!”
Having paraded all around the public rooms on the first floor, the
bell-hop was returning to the desk with the card in his hand, when
the vigilant clerk spied the Alexanders in Mr. Dalken’s party.
“There, you’ll find out where the lady is by asking of her husband
or daughter—over by the palms,” said the clerk. Then Mr. Alexander
saw the boy hurry across the lobby in his direction.
The little man drew himself up, to look as majestic as possible,
before he turned to stare at the bell-boy. “You say this caller is
for my wife? Well, I’ll go and entertain him, until she comes in.”
Without another word, Mr. Alexander started off, but Dodo felt it
would surely create a divorce in her family if her father was
permitted to interview Mr. Alveston alone—perhaps he would tell him
he was holding up a private touring party, and then ask him to get
out of the way. It was well known that Mr. Alexander stood on little
ceremony and lost no time in speaking bluntly to people who caused
him any annoyance. Therefore it happened that Dodo got her two
girl-friends to hurry with her at the heels of her father. All four
approached the caller about the same time.
Algernon Alveston sprang up from the great leather chair, in which
he had been quite lost, and gave his coat and vest a nervous yank to
straighten out any possible creases. Then he flicked off an
imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve, and “hem-hem-ed” several
times, before he was ready to welcome Dodo and her friends.
Dodo stood still, expecting Algy to join her, then she would prevent
her father from taking a high hand in the addition of the young man
to the touring party.
Algernon’s spirit was willing to fulfill Dodo’s wishes, but his head
was weak. As he nervously started to greet Dodo and be introduced to
her father and the two handsome girls beside her, his extremely
pointed-toed shoe caught in the long fringe of the Turkish rug.
Presto! away went the dapper youth, as though he was performing a
fancy dance for the benefit of his audience. In fact, his body
seemed to be suspended above the floor in a horizontal position
instead of being upright.
Even so, he might have eventually balanced himself, in order to gain
a vertical position, as man was meant to be, had it not been for his
thick, heavy walking-stick. As he went two-stepping over the carpet,
the cane struck the table legs and came back like a boomerang. In
another moment it had managed to get between his weak knees, and in
another moment Algy was measuring his full length upon the floor
directly in front of little Mr. Alexander.
It was all done in so short a time that the girls had not had
leisure to catch their breaths, and Mr. Alexander was not provided
with any other exclamation than his favorite one, which always came
from him like a blast from a small furnace.
“By the Great Horned Spoon! What’cha floppin’ in front o’ me for? I
ain’t no royal personage waitin’ to have my subjecks kiss my shoe,
like-as-how you Britons do, when you got a favor to ask. Now, git
up, and behave like a _real_ man.” With this advice, Mr. Alexander
assisted Algy by kicking the troublesome cane out of the way.
“Ah,—I beg pawdin; aw, I neveh thought of saluting you, Mr.
Alexandeh. It was owing to a trifling catch of my boot on the rug,”
explained Algy, rising awkwardly to his feet, and groping about for
his beloved monocle. So nervous was he, that he adjusted the
eye-glass and never realized that the fall had loosened and lost the
glass. He wore the fine gold-wire rim as though the glass was there.
“Yeh, I noticed the triflin’ trip,” smiled Mr. Alexander.
Algy interpreted the smile as one of paternal sympathy, and never
dreamed that Dodo’s father was actually laughing at the vapid
admirer who seemed so feather-brained.
“Weally, Miss Dodo, I must apologize for such accidental behavior on
my part. I feah I frightened you a bit, but I assure you it was
owing to that trifling trip,” repeated Algy, finding it difficult to
think of any new sentence.
“As Daddy said, ‘never mind.’ Remember you are out west now, and not
in your oft-quoted British Isles. You must know how awfully
democratic father is—just the opposite of you, Mr. Alveston.”
“Oh, I see! Perhaps youh fatheh will convert my views on democracy.
At pwesent, howeveh, I am a thoroughbred autocrat with tendencies
toward my English ancestry.” Algy was not very clear about his
tendencies, thought Polly, as she stood listening very seriously.
“Naturally you would have ancestral tendencies—every one has,”
laughed Dodo; then Algy was ready to be presented.
“In these modern days, the young folks gen’ally take after
themselves,” grunted Mr. Alexander. “All the same, ef this young
feller is like his ancestors was, it’s a lucky thing they didn’t
have rugs with fringes on ’em in the old times.”
Mr. Alexander’s remark was quite lost, however, because Algy was
being introduced, and he never grasped more than one thing at a
time. At the moment, he was grasping Polly’s fingers in order to
waft a dainty kiss upon their tips in salute. Then came Eleanor’s
turn. And at last, Mr. Alexander was introduced. The little man
scowled at the excessively polite young man, and seemed to be ready
to defend himself in case his fingers were lifted to those thin,
white lips.
Just as the formal introductions ended, Jack strolled over and
called out cheerily: “Oh, here you are! Found, the friend Mrs.
Alexander thought to be lost, strayed or stolen?”
Tom had accompanied Jack, but he remained in the open doorway,
annoyed at what he saw. He had appeared just in time to see Algy
kiss Polly’s fingers, and he felt like cuffing the little dandy’s
ears for such impertinence.
Now, however, he crossed the room and spoke impatiently to Polly.
“Why do you permit that Jackanapes to perform as he did?”
“Why—what do you mean, Tom?” asked Polly, surprised.
“Well, you know very well! A man who loves a girl hates to see her
made a fool of in a public place,” retorted Tom, forgetting Anne
Brewster’s advices and allowing his jealousy to show itself again.
“Don’t you dare speak like that to me! I am not made a fool of by
you or any other man, and I refuse to allow any one to correct
me—especially in a public place, and before all my friends.” With
this reply, Polly turned and marched away.
Too late Tom remembered what Anne had tried to teach him, but it
seemed too late now to make amends. He watched Polly go, and then,
instead of running up to apologize and explain himself, he decided
that this was no place for him. He then went to the porter and asked
him to transfer his baggage to a cab which he would get to take him
to the Denver railway station. Leaving a note of explanation for Mr.
Dalken, he slipped away, and that afternoon was on his way back to
Oak Creek. Long before he reached his destination, however, he had
time to regret his hasty act. How he had longed for this very
wonderful tour with Polly and her friends, and now because of his
demon jealousy all was spoiled again!