"Then it seems to me that you missed one of the most entertaining and instructive features," Jack continued. "You cannot imagine the majestic feminine disdain with which you may be informed that a five-cent bar of soap should be delivered at the back door instead of the front door. The most indignant example was a red-haired woman who was doing her own work in a flat. She fairly blazed. She wanted to know if I didn't know what dumb-waiters were for."
"And what did you say?" the father asked wearily; for the ninth John
Wingfield had a limited sense of humor.
"Oh, I try, however irritating the circumstances, to be most courtly, for the honor of the store," said Jack. "I told her that I was very sorry and I would speak to you in person about the mistake."
"You mean that you admitted who you were?"
"Oh, no! The red-haired woman laughed and took the package in at the front door," Jack responded. Anybody in Little Rivers would have understood just how he looked and smiled and why it was that the red-haired woman laughed.
"Jack—now, really, Jack, this is not quite dignified!" expostulated the father. "What do you think your ancestor would say to it?"
"I suspect that he would have made an even more ingratiating bow to the lady than I could," said Jack, thoughtfully. "They had the grand manner better developed in his day than in ours."
In the ensuing weeks John Wingfield, Sr. dwelt in a kind of infernal wonder about his son. He was cheered when some friend of his world who had met Jack in the garb of his caste, as fitted by Burleigh, would say: "Fine, strapping son you have there, Wingfield!" He was abashed and dumfounded when Jack announced that he had taken Mamie Devore, who sold culinary utensils in the basement, out to luncheon with her "steady company," Joe Mathewson, driver of one of the warehouse trucks.
"They were a little awed at first," Jack explained, "but they soon became natural. I don't know anything pleasanter than making people feel perfectly natural, do you? You see, Joe and Mamie are very real, father, and most businesslike; an ambitious, upstanding pair. They're going to have two thousand dollars saved before they marry.
"'I don't believe that a woman ought to work out after she's married,' was the way Joe put it. And Mamie, with her eyes fairly devouring him, snapped back: 'No, she'd have enough to do looking after you, you big old bluff!'