The speaker, Mr. Thomas Crosby, must have had implicit faith in his daughter’s prowess to venture such a confident assertion as that, for he was quite in the dark as to who “he, she, or it” might be.
It was a cozy November evening, when open fires and friendly drop-lights are in order, and the three grown-folks of the family were enjoying these luxuries. Mr. Crosby was supposed to be reading his paper, but he had a sociable way of letting fall an occasional item of interest, or of letting fall the paper itself, at the first hint of interest in the remarks of his wife and daughter.
Only within a very short time had there been three grown-folks in the family, 241 unless, indeed, we count Rollo, the Gordon setter, who had attained his majority years ago. Di, who was but just turned sixteen, really did not like to remember how very recently she had been sent to bed at eight o’clock!
Could Mr. Crosby have guessed the scheme which was occupying the active brain of the young person engaged in embroidering harmless bachelor’s buttons upon a linen centrepiece, he would have been very much astonished,—whether pleasurably or otherwise, events alone must show. And since events had been taken in hand by Di the revelation was not likely to be long delayed.
The incident which had elicited her father’s declaration of confidence was a request on Di’s part to be allowed the privilege of inviting a guest of her own choosing to the Thanksgiving dinner. The family party was to be materially reduced this year, for Mrs. Crosby’s mother and sister, their only available relatives, were at that moment sojourning in Rome, where, if they were sufficiently 242 mindful of current maxims to do as the Romans do, they were very unlikely to meet with any satisfactory combination of turkey and plum-pudding. It was with that fact in view, that Di felt a fair degree of assurance in preferring her request. They all liked each other, of course, better than they liked anybody else, but, really, one must do something a little out of the common on Thanksgiving day.
“Certainly,” Di’s mother had agreed; “you shall invite any one you choose. I have been wishing we could think of some one to ask, but people all have their own family parties on Thanksgiving day. Is it to be one of your girl friends?”
“That is my secret,” Di had replied, sedately; “but, whoever it is, he, she, or it is a very important personage, and will have to be treated with great consideration!”
“And how is that very unimportant personage, Di Crosby, going to get hold of so great a dignitary?” Mrs. Crosby had laughingly inquired. At which 243 juncture Mr. Crosby had expressed his belief that Di would bag her game.
That the prospective dinner should be incomplete was all the harder, considering the fact that the Crosbys were, by good rights, the possessors of that most desired ornament of such an occasion,—a bona fide grandfather. Not only was old Mr. Crosby living, and in excellent health, but his residence was not above a dozen blocks removed from his son’s house. And yet no grandfather had ever graced their Thanksgiving feast.
Family quarrels are an unpleasant subject at the best, and since Di herself had never learned the precise cause of the long estrangement between father and son, in which the old gentleman had decreed that his son’s wife and children should share, it is hardly worth while to recount it here. Suffice it to say, that it was a very old quarrel indeed, older than Di herself, and one to which Mr. and Mrs. Crosby never alluded.