Sam staggered to the sofa, and fell along its length in a paroxysm of laughter.
“Magnificent! Superb! He’ll show up, will he? Of course he’ll show up—all of him. Oh, what a lark!”
Joe made a pianissimo beat with his outstretched hand in the hope of reducing Sam’s volume of protest, and scanned the letter once again.
“Just my luck!” he muttered. “Always some vulgarian of a father or crank mother gets in the way. No, we won’t have any party. I’m going to call it off. Tell him I’ve just got a telegram. Sent for from out of town. Professional business—that sort of thing. A man who will write a letter like that in answer to one addressed to his wife would be an intolerable nuisance. Couldn’t get rid of him with a dynamite bomb. I’ll fix him, and I’ll do it now,” and he squared himself at his desk.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind, Joe,” returned Sam.
“Now, the girls are not coming, we’ll have the party, nuisance or no nuisance. He’ll be more fun than a half-starved Harlem goat munching a tin sign. We’ll cut out Matty Higgins and the other girls, and make it a stag. Just you leave it to me. I’ll take care of him, and if there’s anything in him, I’ll get it out. If he can’t sing, he’ll dance. If he won’t do either, I’ll stand him on his head.”
That Sam should be willing, even enthusiastic, over the admission of any one member of the Ford family was a point gained in Joe’s mind. Whether, when he had once gained admission to the family circle, he could stand the surroundings, he would decide upon later. Mrs. Ford was evidently a woman of breeding and refinement; her daughter was—well, there was no use discussing that with Sam. Sam never went out of his way to be polite to any woman, young or old. As to Ford, Senior, there must be a good side to him or he could not be where he was. There was no question that he was unaccustomed to the usages of good society; his note showed that. So were a lot of other men he knew who were engrossed in their business.
Yes, he would have the party, and the next week he would give a tea, whether Sam was willing or not, and Miss Ford would pour it, or he would miss his guess. To keep on living on the top floor of the same house, day after day, and that girl two flights below, and not be able to do more than wish her “good morning” when he met her on the stairs—perhaps not even that—was, to a man of his parts, unthinkable. Yes, the party was the thing, and it would be a stag. And he would send for the fellows the very next day, which was done as soon as he reached his office, both by note and messenger. “Just to whoop things up in the new quarters,” ran the notes, and, “Well, then, all right, we’ll expect you around nine,” rounded up the verbal invitations. Lambing was to arrive early so that he and Sam could arrange one of their latest duets, Atwater to rattle the keys, and Lambing to scrape the catgut. Talcott, the portrait-painter, was also to come. Babson, a brother architect, who had won the gold medal at the League, Sampson, Billings, and a lot more. For refreshments there would be a chafing-dish and unlimited beer in bottles, which Moses was to serve, and a bowl of tobacco, not to mention a varied assortment of pipes, some of clay, with a sprinkling of corn-cobs, the whole to be gladdened by such sandwiches as Matilda could improvise from sundry loaves of baker’s bread and boiled ham. These last Joe attended to himself; the musical and literary features of the evening being left in the hands of his partner. In this was included the standing on his head the principal guest of the evening, provided that worthy gentleman was incapable of furnishing any other form of diversion.
CHAPTER IV
The stranger in passing Enoch Crane on the street would have been likely to have turned and said: “There goes a crusty old gentleman”—he would not have omitted the word “gentleman,” for that he looked and was.