Pray thee, let it serve for table talk.—_Merchant of Venice_,
iii, 5.
It was certainly surprising that when Dodd’s father accepted Miss
Esther’s invitation and came to the Adams house, the gayety of that
particular nation was increased rather than diminished. The young people
most interested had felt that the advent of an elderly gentleman might
prove an obstacle to the careless fun and frolic which they had enjoyed
all summer. Instead of which, Mr. George Washington Dodd, father of
Abraham Lincoln Dodd, proved himself not only ready to follow the
leader, but to lead the followers. He not only fell in with their plans,
but he proposed plans of his own and insisted upon their being carried
out.
The plans were usually impracticable, but he insisted just the same, and
the attempts at them were just as much fun as if they had been
successful. He had not been in the house twenty-four hours before he had
turned the East porch inside out. “I think the hammocks would be more
comfortable out under the trees,” he said, and out the hammocks went.
Michael was instructed how to trim the box-hedges, and the cook was
inducted into the mysteries of a salad dressing which had chives—and
not too many. He persuaded all the clocks in the house to strike
together, and painted the chicken-coops red because he liked them better
so.
He reconstructed Jack’s battle-ship upon more approved models and showed
him the distinctive difference between a brig and a brigantine. As for
Chub, he proved himself to be an adept in the quelling of the ebullient
fits of temper which manifested themselves so often. Her most theatrical
pose was to sit down and yell with much enthusiasm, as she did when she
first discovered the young men on the East porch. When George Washington
Dodd saw this exhibition for the first time, he approached Chub
casually, put his hand over her mouth, and said “Stop that!” whereupon
Chub immediately stopped. Though often repeated, this process continued
efficacious.
In a word Mr. Dodd became a power in the house. Not just such a power as
was Lieutenant Adams. Putnam’s masterfulness was actuated by motives
which would be considered rules under the Army Regulations, and, so far
as he was concerned, they made law. They were reasonable and—well, when
he wanted a thing done, he wanted it done instantly. They have that
habit of demanding obedience in the Army. Dodd, on the contrary, had the
wayward whims of a spoiled child, but carried them out with an
unflinching determination before which even Putnam Adams went down.
Miss Esther pondered deeply over this difference in the characters of
the two men. She realized that she implicitly obeyed Putnam, and she
enjoyed doing so. She assisted in the carrying out of Mr. Dodd’s plans,
as they all did, compelled by the sheer force of his whimsical,
inconsequent personality.
“He’s like a child,” she thought, “a great, big, overgrown boy; and he’s
just made to be humored. If Lillian can only learn to humor him, she can
have her own way as much as she likes.”
It was at this point in her meditations that Miss Esther was interrupted
by Lincoln Dodd.
“Didn’t I tell you Father would admire your Lillian Hastings?” he said,
dropping astride of the first chair he came to.
“Does he?” said Miss Esther, eagerly.
“Does he! I should say so. Just look at them now!”
Miss Esther looked and saw Dodd Senior and Lillian Hastings sitting on
the lawn deeply interested in a game of mumble-peg. Although Lillian’s
discarded parasol lay only a few feet away, the players sat in the
broiling sun, apparently oblivious of the heat.
“Coming on all right, isn’t it?” said Lincoln.
“Yes. I hope so—I think so; but he hasn’t said anything definite.”
“How do you know he hasn’t?” asked Lincoln.
“Oh, I’m sure Lillian would have told me if he had.”
“Perhaps he hasn’t had a chance.”
“Oh, if that’s the case, let’s make a chance for them.”
Lincoln entered into the spirit of the game with enthusiasm. “Let’s ask
Lillian to stay to tea,” he exclaimed.
“She’ll stay anyway,” replied Miss Esther; “and besides, that won’t give
them a chance alone.”
“Well, ask her to stay to dinner, and Dad can take her home.”
“That will do,” said Miss Esther; “and it’s a lovely moonlight night.”
So the conspiracy succeeded, and Lillian stayed to dinner.
“Am I the only guest?” asked Lillian, when dinner was announced.
“Yes,” said Miss Esther; “that doesn’t embarrass you, does it?”
“I was afraid it might,” said Putnam, “so I’ve sent for Jean. Stay the
proceedings, Cousin Esther; she’ll be here in a minute.”
[Illustration: _In the broiling sun, oblivious of the heat._]
Jean came flying in, becomingly flushed after her run across the field.
“I came across lots,” she exclaimed, “because I was in such a hurry to
get here. Thank you, so much, Miss Esther, for sending Jack for me.”
“Why, I didn’t send him,” said Miss Esther.
“But he said that you said that I must come because you were going to
have strawberry shortcake for dinner.”
“How ridiculous,” said Miss Esther. “I never sent any message at all by
Jack, and besides, there aren’t any strawberries now. It’s too late.”
“I never thought of that,” said Jean, looking a little blank. “I was so
glad to come,” she explained, ingenuously.
“I sent the message myself,” said Putnam, calmly. “I knew you wouldn’t
come unless I sent an invitation from Cousin Esther. And of course, I
didn’t mean real strawberry shortcake.”
“Perhaps you didn’t mean for me really to come,” said Jean.
“I meant I really wanted you to come.”
“If I had known that you sent the invitation I wouldn’t have come.”
“Not if you knew that I really wanted you?”
At this, Lincoln, who was behind the speakers, nudged Miss Esther’s arm,
and rolled up his eyes ecstatically. Miss Esther looked like a
beneficent Machiavelli, and folded her hands with an air of intense
complacency.
“Of course,” said Jean, “you always succeed in getting what you
want;—that’s your way. But in this case—”
“In this case,” said Putnam, provokingly, “I succeeded in getting you.”
“Indeed you haven’t succeeded in getting me!”
“Well, if I haven’t, I will,” said Putnam, as he rose to go to dinner.
This speech so pleased the conspirators, that Lincoln Dodd seized Miss
Esther’s hands, and the two fairly danced down the long hall toward the
dining-room.
“Hang out our banners on the outward walls,” sang Miss Esther.
“What for?” asked Lillian, who, accompanied by Mr. Dodd, had joined the
procession.
“So people can see them, of course,” said Lincoln. “It’s foolish to hide
your banners under a bushel.”
With what Miss Esther deemed a masterpiece of generalship, she arranged
that Lillian should sit next to Mr. Dodd. Lillian, willfully
misunderstanding instructions, took the chair on the side of the table
where Lincoln stood.
“Oh, she doesn’t mean me,” he exclaimed in dismay. “She means the
Ancient.”
“What are you?” asked Putnam; “the Honorable?”
“I think,” said Lillian, “that the young Mr. Dodd looks older than the
old Mr. Dodd.”
“It’s quite as bad,” said Putnam, “to say ‘the old Mr. Dodd,’ as to say
‘the Ancient.’”
“But I have to distinguish them in some way, and I don’t see that either
one looks older than the other.”
“You might call me George,” suggested Mr. Dodd, casually.
“I’m afraid if I did, you would call me Lillian.”
“Very likely,” said Mr. Dodd.
“Let’s order some more banners,” whispered Lincoln to Miss Esther. “I
think we’ll need them.”
“What are you talking about?” said Jean. “What are these banners?”
“A banner,” said the Ancient, instructively, “is one who or that which
bans.”
“What does ban mean?” asked Lillian.
“A ban,” said the Ancient, still instructively, “is a thing you put
things under.”
“I thought it meant to get married,” said Jean.
“That’s when it’s plural,” explained the Ancient, kindly. “It takes two
banns to get married.”
“May I interrupt your very wise discourse,” said Putnam, “long enough to
request you to pass me the salt?”
“Now that’s always the way,” said the Ancient in an exasperated tone;
“the conventional dinner-table appointments are sadly at fault. One
never gets fairly started on a logical sequence of ideas, but one is
interrupted by a request to pass the salt. I use the term advisedly. The
passing of the salt is but a type of the things which we are made to do
at the time when we do not want to do them. There should be a remedy for
all this. Invention, as it stands to-day, is deplorably neglectful of
our minor needs. Invention, after all, is but the application of some
well-known force or principle to a new use.”
Here the Ancient produced from his pocket a small mechanical toy. It was
a tiny automobile, made of tin and painted red, and when wound up would
run by itself for several minutes. Turning it upside down, he proceeded
to wind it; then reversing it, and holding the wheels tightly, he
emptied into it the contents of Miss Esther’s salt-cellar. Starting it
in the direction of Putnam, he released the wheels and the machine moved
slowly along the table.
“You see,” he observed, “how easy it is to apply mechanical power in a
way which will do the most good. If every dinner-table were supplied
with this simple contrivance, it would do away with the passing of the
salt. Consequently, there would be no interruption in one’s flow of
conversation.”
“With _one’s_ flow of conversation!” said Jean. “And pray, when would
the other five get a chance to speak?”
“They wouldn’t,” said the Ancient.
“I don’t see why any one wants to interrupt,” said Lillian, “when the
conversation is so instructive and entertaining as Mr. Dodd’s is.”
“Banners!” said Lincoln, aside to Miss Esther.
But later in the evening there was reason to bring in the banners from
the outward walls, or at least it seemed so. Miss Esther’s deep-laid
scheme for sending the elder Mr. Dodd home with Lillian seemed in
imminent peril. When Lillian announced that it was time for her to go,
Putnam suggested that as he was about to go home with Jean, Lincoln and
Lillian could go with them, and they would all walk around by the brook.
Miss Esther was not present at the moment, and though three people
strongly objected to the arrangement, as Putnam’s suggestions were
looked upon as commands, none of them dared question it.
Lincoln Dodd did not wish to appear ungallant; Washington Dodd was not
quite sure that his escort was desired, and Lillian naturally hesitated
to express her preference.
Lincoln Dodd rushed into the house, ostensibly to fetch his hat, but
really to find Miss Esther. He almost ran over that lady in the hall,
and whispered tragically, “Haul in the banners! Awful things are
happening! Putnam says I’ve got to go home with Lillian.”
“Putnam, indeed!” cried Miss Esther. “I’ll fix Putnam.”
She hurried out on the veranda.
“Lincoln can’t go home with you, Lillian,” she said. “I want him myself
this evening. He promised to—transplant some bulbs for me.”
“They’re night-blooming cereus,” said Lincoln, “and they always have to
be moved at night.”
“Yes,” said Miss Esther; “and so, Mr. George Dodd, will you please
escort Miss Hastings home?”
“Certainly, if Miss Hastings doesn’t object to the transfer,” said Mr.
Dodd; but he spoke without enthusiasm.
“Oh, all Dodds look alike to me,” said Lillian, flippantly.
Miss Esther looked the picture of despair, as, after this speech,
Lillian and her apparently unwilling escort walked silently down the
path.
“Honestly,” said Miss Esther, “from the depths of your heart, tell me
truly what you think; tell me by the light of your greater experience,
and by the knowledge you have of your father’s affections; tell me,” she
continued, tragically, “_will_ those two hearts find each other?”
She hung on his words with the air of a doomed prisoner awaiting
sentence.
“I don’t know,” said Dodd.