“No, Mortimore, thank you.” Lucius brought the parasol down from his shoulder and stood regarding it seriously. “No; it isn’t out of order. I—I just brought it with me. What’s the news?”
“Well, I don’t know of much,” said Mortimer, likewise staring attentively at the parasol. “Some wall-paperin’ goin’ on here and there over town, E. J. Fuller says. Ed says P. Borodino Thompson told him he was goin’ to drop round and call this evening, he says; but afterwards I was up at the hardware store, and Bore come in there and Rolfo Williams’s wife talked him out o’ goin’. ‘My heavens!’ she says, ‘can’t you even give her a couple days to git unpacked and straighten up the house?’ So Bore says he guessed he’d wait till to-morrow afternoon and ast her to go buggy-ridin’ in that ole mud-coloured phaeton of his. Milo Carter’s fixin’ to go up there before long, and I hear Henry Ledyard says he’s liable to start in mighty soon, too. You and Bore better look out, Lu. Henry’s some years younger than what you and Bore are. He ain’t as stocky as what you are, nor as skinny as what Bore is, and he certainly out-dresses the both of you every day in the week an’ twicet on Sunday!”
“Thank you, Mortimore,” Lucius responded, nodding. “I’d been calculating a little on a new necktie—but probably it wouldn’t be much use if Henry Ledyard’s going to——”
“No, sir,” Mortimer interrupted to agree. “Henry buys ’em a couple or more at a time. Newt Truscom’s goin’ to be a rich man if Henry don’t quit. So long, Lu!”
Mr. Allen, turning in at the entrance to the stairway that led to his office, waved his left hand in farewell, his right being employed in an oddly solicitous protection of the parasol—though nothing threatened it. But Mortimer, having sauntered on a few steps, halted, and returned to the stairway entrance, whence he called loudly upward:
“Lu! Oh, Lu Allen!”
“What is it?”
“I forgot to mention it. You want to be lookin’ out your window along around three o’clock or half-past, to-morrow afternoon.”
“What for?”
“Why, P. Borodino was talkin’ and all so much, about that buggy-ride, you know, so Rolfo Williams bet him a safety-razor against three dollars’ worth of accident insurance that he wouldn’t git her to go with him, and Bore’s got to drive around the Square, first thing after they start, to prove it. There’s quite a heap of interest around town in all this and that; and you better keep your eye out your window from three o’clock on!”