WE INVITE MORE GUESTS.
“WELL, Philip, my boy,” said Tom, slapping me on the knee when
we were all in our seats, and I had relieved “Crœsus” of the
reins, “I suppose it was an unpardonable piece of assurance for
me to invite a man you had never seen without letting you know
he was coming. And then to let him come up first! That was
certainly rubbing it in, but the poor boy doesn’t have a chance
to get out much. Sort of a fresh air charity on your part.”
He roared with laughter at this sally of his, and Hepburn smiled
faintly.
“This poor boy has always had to do the society act, Philip, and
he’s fitted for better things. Hope you haven’t any hops up at
your house. Have you any hops?”
“Not a hop,” said I.
“Nor a _cotillion?_”
“Nor a _cotillon_. In fact, I’m afraid it may be rather dull for
one who is accustomed to do something all the time.”
“I’m sure I’ll have a delightful time,” said Hepburn from the
second seat. “I’m rather tired. It’ll be a jolly good thing for
me.”
“By George, isn’t this a paintable country?” broke in Tom. “If a
man could only get the fragrance of this air into his pictures
it would be no trouble to get rid of them.”
“Inoculated already,” laughed Ethel.
“Oh, I always get inoculated as soon as I come to this kind of
country. I was born on prairie country and I never saw a hill
until I was eighteen, and then I wondered how I had lived
without ’em.” He turned ’way round. “Pity you don’t paint,
Benedict.”
Benedict, on the back seat, said, “Oh, I don’t have to _do_
anything to enjoy this. Just to be alive is enough in air like
this. Isn’t it, Alice?”
And Alice agreed with him and the horses bore us higher and
higher, slower and slower, and at last we arrived and Ellery and
Cherry greeted us.
James came out to relieve the guests of their suit cases and I
invited all hands to go to their rooms and remove the evidences
of their smoky ride.
When Ethel and Madge had come down from our room I said to
Ethel,
“No dressing, I suppose?”
“No, I suppose not,” said she, and there was a little note of
regret in her voice.
I went up and washed and put on a cutaway and in a few minutes I
came down and walked back and forth on the veranda.
In about a quarter of an hour the three men who were using
Ellery’s chamber as a dressing room came down the front stairs.
I caught a glimpse of them and lo, two were in Tuxedos, and
Hepburn was in full evening clothes.
Quick as a wink, and before they saw me, I whisked around to the
back of the house, and finding Ethel in the kitchen, where she
was superintending some salad arrangement, I said,
“They’re all dressed. Me to _my_ evening clothes.”
“Good,” said she.
I saw Ellery within calling distance. He was in a sack coat. I
hailed him and he came up.
“Don’t want to make ’em feel foolish. They’re all dressed. Run
up and put on your Tuxedo or whatever you have. Come into my
room to dress and we can help each other.”
He got his clothes and we hastened to my room, where we made as
quick changes as we could.
“Funny about Ethel,” said I. “She likes simplicity, but she also
likes evening clothes. Says a man looks better. I won’t wear a
Tuxedo and look like a bob-tailed cat, so I’ve got to go the
whole thing. When she sees five immaculate shirt fronts she’ll
be just about happy.”
“Well, it does look nice,” said Ellery.
“Oh, I don’t mind once I’m in them.”
At last we were ready all but our ties, and none too soon, for
we heard Ethel come into the front hall and say, “Dinner’s
ready. Where are the men?”
And then Madge said, “Oh, they had to run up stairs at the last
minute to get something. Here they come.”
Ethel called up to me, “Hurry down, dear. We’ll go in
informally.”
“That’s right. We’ll be right down,” said I.
We heard the tramp of the other three, and I would have run down
on account of the stranger within my gates, but Ellery asked me
to tie his cravat, and I made a botchy tie of it, and finally
Ethel called up from the dining room. “We’re all waiting, dear.”
Then we both went down in our evening clothes, and entered the
dining room. Around it stood the ladies and the three men, and
when we saw them and they saw us a happy shout arose. The men
were not in evening dress.
They _had_ seen me when they first came down, and, as Tom
explained afterward, Hepburn, seeing that I was not in evening
clothes, had suggested that they all change back, which Tom was
very glad to do, “as he hated the durned things.”
So there they stood in sacks and cutaway and we were the only
ones in evening dress.
“Well, I won’t change back again,” said I, “but after this let’s
give our city clothes a rest and just be comfortable.”
“But I contend,” said Benedict, “that evening clothes _are_ just
as comfortable.”
“Yes,” said Tom, “but it’s harder to get into ’em, and if we go
out walking after dinner it’s ridiculous to be dressed so
stiffly in a wild flower country.”
It was a jolly dinner and no one did more to make it jolly than
Tom. His humour is elemental, but it is genuine, and his
appreciation of it is also genuine and his tremendous
reverberating laugh is infectious.
Many times during the progress of the meal I found Hepburn’s
placid eyes resting on Cherry.
“Two of them,” thought I, and after dinner Ethel and I compared
notes and we agreed that Cherry could have her choice.
Perhaps we jumped to conclusions, but to see Cherry was to love
her, and Ethel told me that she was glad that Cherry was only a
little girl when I first met her or “you might have been Mr.
Paxton.”
“Phil, do you know who it would do good to have up here?” said
Tom, after a burst of enthusiasm concerning the country. “Jack
Manton. Jack Manton and Billy Edson. They’re both stone broke
and they’re getting their country by taking walks out of New
York, and this scenery would just about kill ’em both dead. Why
don’t you ask ’em up?”
A roar followed this question.
“Let ’em sleep in the chimney,” I suggested, at which innocent
remark Minerva, who was waiting on table, gave a suppressed
giggle that set Cherry off and she was followed first by Ellery
and then—of all the people in the world, by Mr. Hepburn.
Probably Minerva’s act itself was so unheard of that it struck
him as being humourous. A maid laughing at table.
But it was a lucky thing that Minerva was in the room. That is
lucky for Jack and Billy.
“Kin I say sump’n?” said she to Ethel, and Ethel, rather
astonished, said, “What is it?”
“They’s a lot of boards out in the woodshed, an’ James could
build a place for those gen’lemen.”
“The very thing,” said Tom. “That’s it. That’s _IT_. Just ask
’em up and save their lives.”
“But you said it would kill ’em dead to come up,” said Cherry.
“Oh, they wouldn’t stay dead five minutes in this air,” said he.
“Come on. If I hadn’t been an artist I would have been a
carpenter. Send for ’em. I’ll help build the shack.”
I looked at Minerva. Her face was beaming.
She loved company.
“What do you think, Ethel?”
“Why, the more the merrier,” said she. “Are they congenial?”
“Congenial’s no name for it,” said Tom. “Both of ’em starving.
Neither has sold a picture in six months, and the night before I
came away they dropped in at my studio, and when I told ’em
where I was coming they were as happy as if they were coming
themselves, and were going to share in it. Two nice, promising
boys, and perhaps this would be their salvation.”
“Have them come by all means,” said Ethel.
And Minerva went out to tell James the good news.
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