CHAPTER XVIII
FRIDAY FOR BAD LUCK
SPEAKING of Friday and the mystery of luck. Luck is supposed to shift in one direction or another on the sixth day of every week in the year. It is supposed to shift for everybody. A great many people are either too ignorant or too supercilious to acknowledge this vast and oppressive truth, however. They regard Friday as a plain, ordinary day, and go on being fatuously optimistic.
On the other hand, when it comes Friday, the capable and the far-seeing are prone to accept it as it was intended by the Creator, who, from confidential reports, paused on the sixth day (as we reckon it) of his labours and looked back on what already had been accomplished. He was dissatisfied. He set to work again. Right then and there Friday became an unlucky day, according to a great many philosophers. If the Creator had stopped then and let well-enough alone, there wouldn't have been any cause for complaint. He would have failed to create Adam (an afterthought), and the human race, lacking existence, would not have been compelled to put up with life,—which is a mess, after all.
If more people would pause to consider the futility of living between Thursday and Saturday, a great deal of woe and misfortune might be avoided.
For example, when Mrs. Smith-Parvis called on Mrs. McFaddan on the Monday of the week that is now making history through these pages, she completely overlooked the fact that there was a Friday still to be reckoned with.
True, she had in mind a day somewhat more remote when, after coming face to face with the blooming Mrs. MCFaddan who happened to open her own front door,—it being Maggie's day out,—she had been compelled to substitute herself in person for the cards she meant to leave. Mrs. McFaddan had cordially sung out to her from the front stoop, over the head of the shocked footman, that she was at home and would Mrs. Smith-Parvis please step in.
Thursday, two weeks hence, was the day Mrs. Smith-Parvis had in mind. She had not been in the McFaddan parlour longer than a minute and a half before she realized that an invitation by word of mouth would do quite as well as an expensively engraved card by post. There was nothing formal about Mrs. McFaddan. She was sorry that Con wasn't home; he would hate like poison to have missed seeing Mrs. Smith-Parvis when she did them the honour to call. But Con was not likely to be in before seven,—he was that busy, poor man,—and it would be asking too much of Mrs. Smith-Parvis to wait till then.
So, the lady from the upper East Side had no hesitancy in asking the lady from the lower West Side to dine with her on Thursday the nineteenth.