Saturday the Second
Peter had arranged to come for us with a motor-car and carry us all off to the Rose Tournament yesterday morning, “for I do want to be sitting right next to that little tike of yours,” he explained, meaning Dinkie, “when he bumps into his first brass band!”
But little Dinkie didn’t hear his brass band, and we didn’t go to the Rose Tournament, although it was almost at our doors and some eighty thousand crowded automobiles foregathered here from the rest of the state to get a glimpse of it. For Peter, who is staying at the Greene here instead of at the Alexandria over in Los Angeles, presented himself before I’d even sat down to breakfast and before lazy old Dinky-Dunk was even out of bed.
Peter, I noticed, had a somewhat hollow look about the eye, but I accepted it as nothing more than the after-effects of his long trip, and blithely commanded him to sit down and partake of my coffee.
Peter, however, wasn’t thinking about coffee.
“I’m afraid,” he began, “that I’m bringing you rather—rather bad news.”
We stood for a moment with our gazes locked. He seemed appraising me, speculating on just what effect this message of his might have on me.
“What is it?” I asked, with that forlorn tug at inner reserves which life teaches us to send over the wire as we grow older.
“I’ve come,” explained Peter, “simply because this thing would have reached you a little later in your morning paper—and I hated the thought of having it spring out at you that way. So you won’t mind, will you? You’ll understand the motive behind the message?”
“But what is it?” I repeated, a little astonished by this obliquity in a man customarily so direct.